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> "Reward points are actually a good use case for blockchains," he said. This doesn't make sense to me. The whole "innovation" of cryptocurrency is that you do

by paulgb 9y ago

> "Reward points are actually a good use case for blockchains," he said. This doesn't make sense to me. The whole "innovation" of cryptocurrency is that you don't centralize trust in one party. In this case you already need to trust BK to redeem the coin, so what does an untrusted mechanism of exchange actually give you? This just seems like cashing in on crypto hype.

nkassis 9y ago
"This just seems like cashing in on crypto hype." A that they are having a lot of success i'd say, we are all talking about their little rewards program and discussing whoppers. Brilliant. Bloomberg going to give them a bunch of free advertising with this.
aphextron 9y ago
>This just seems like cashing in on crypto hype. Of course it is. This is a publicity stunt (and hilarious I might add), as Burger King has been known to do in the past. They've had a brilliant marketing team for a long time.
- paulgb 9y ago
  Sure, but the quote I extracted is from a cryptocurrency authority, not Burger King. I'm confused by the viability of this sort of loyalty program being on the blockchain in general.
exelius 9y ago
Actually, it's actually a great use of blockchain. That way, your customers can transfer points with eachother, etc -- then spend them at your restaurant. It does in fact decentralize trust -- the key here is that it's the restaurant trusting the customer, not the other way around. Each point only gets spent once, and there's a built-in automated mechanism for "cashing in" those points. I mean, I agree it's probably dumb for hamburger loyalty points. But it makes a ton of sense for hotel/airline points if you build the wallet into your mobile app and allow consumers to transfer points with each other offline. If it's transparent to the user, there's no reason it couldn't work.
- eisa01 9y ago
  Other loyalty program skim a percentage if you want to gift points, so I'm not sure that is a feature
  - exelius 9y ago
    You can do that via blockchain as well; I imagine BK will own all the transaction processors, so for any transaction to an external wallet, you add on a fee. Ethereum and Bitcoin also do this; only the mechanism for determining the transaction fee is algorithmic rather than a fixed % of the transaction value. All that said, loyalty points have a lot in common with crypto currencies simply from a functional perspective. It's a pretty natural application. You just merge the points back into the blockchain via an app or something. But this way it's secure, auditable and likely costs the company less to operate.
stale2002 9y ago
Having a transparent database of money/tokens that can be transferred independently between parties is still very interesting. How many other reward systems allow you to transfer points to other people?

by paulgb 9y ago

nkassis 9y ago

"This just seems like cashing in on crypto hype." A that they are having a lot of success i'd say, we are all talking about their little rewards program and discussing whoppers. Brilliant. Bloomberg going to give them a bunch of free advertising with this.

aphextron 9y ago

>This just seems like cashing in on crypto hype. Of course it is. This is a publicity stunt (and hilarious I might add), as Burger King has been known to do in the past. They've had a brilliant marketing team for a long time.

paulgb 9y ago
Sure, but the quote I extracted is from a cryptocurrency authority, not Burger King. I'm confused by the viability of this sort of loyalty program being on the blockchain in general.

exelius 9y ago

Actually, it's actually a great use of blockchain. That way, your customers can transfer points with eachother, etc -- then spend them at your restaurant. It does in fact decentralize trust -- the key here is that it's the restaurant trusting the customer, not the other way around. Each point only gets spent once, and there's a built-in automated mechanism for "cashing in" those points. I mean, I agree it's probably dumb for hamburger loyalty points. But it makes a ton of sense for hotel/airline points if you build the wallet into your mobile app and allow consumers to transfer points with each other offline. If it's transparent to the user, there's no reason it couldn't work.

eisa01 9y ago
Other loyalty program skim a percentage if you want to gift points, so I'm not sure that is a feature
- exelius 9y ago
  You can do that via blockchain as well; I imagine BK will own all the transaction processors, so for any transaction to an external wallet, you add on a fee. Ethereum and Bitcoin also do this; only the mechanism for determining the transaction fee is algorithmic rather than a fixed % of the transaction value. All that said, loyalty points have a lot in common with crypto currencies simply from a functional perspective. It's a pretty natural application. You just merge the points back into the blockchain via an app or something. But this way it's secure, auditable and likely costs the company less to operate.

stale2002 9y ago

Having a transparent database of money/tokens that can be transferred independently between parties is still very interesting. How many other reward systems allow you to transfer points to other people?