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Circle transactions are free... What is their revenue model?

yc1010 12y ago
Well bitcoin transactions are almost free (miners fee is what nowadays 1-2 cents regardless of amount?) as is. It is hard to compete with that Their aim is to grow and acquire users and become an import cog in bitcoin and financial worlds Once you get lets say to a few million to a hundred million users then you endup with all sorts of possibilities such as becoming a bank and offering loans (this alone coupled with a good database of users could be a money maker), offering checking/savings accounts, hell making it easier for users to invest in stocks etc (might be what Goldman interested...) and so on Remember the likes of Facebook and Twitter didnt have a "revenue model" at start either, look where they are now... edit: another possibility would be mobile payments (nfc or qr code) to any merchant accepting bitcoin of which there is a growing number thanks to bitpay, think of all the data that could be mined there, they can basically make the whole credit card network obsolete by bypassing it
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  > Remember the likes of Facebook and Twitter didnt have a "revenue model" at start either, look where they are now... Facebook's doing OK (they have the advantage of not locking themselves into being a simple 140 character messaging service), but Twitter's quarterly results were fairly abysmal.
- bdcravens 12y ago
  > Well bitcoin transactions are almost free (miners fee is what nowadays 1-2 cents regardless of amount?) as is. It is hard to compete with that You're talking sending Bitcoin from one address to another, not Bitcoin/fiat exchange. Apples to oranges.
IkmoIkmo 12y ago
Typical grow first, monetise later. It doesn't appear they have any business model at the moment, just churning VC money and trying to grow. They charge no fees for deposits, withdrawals, sending or receiving money, and their buy/sell spread is zero, and they're not known to advertise or sell user data nor do their terms mention it. I think it's best to think of it as someone trying to build roads all over the country in a world without cars, hoping to allow a car industry to explode. Once cars become mainstream, you can monetise the roads, sell tires especially made for those roads, offer driving schools etc. Speculating about their future... I think a Coinbase model is quite likely, Circle is known like Coinbase as a 'universal' company. Coinbase charges a bit on deposits, they have an exchange, a vault, an API. It's quite likely at some point we'll see remittance and financial products (peer to peer loans, derivatives), merchant services (payment processing), digital assets on a public ledger (e.g. replacing notary services or contracts with private-key signed documents on a public, unforgeable ledger) etc. There's lots of angles to monetise the facilitation of many products and services.
bdcravens 12y ago
I believe they have margin atop the Bitcoin price.

Well bitcoin transactions are almost free (miners fee is what nowadays 1-2 cents regardless of amount?) as is. It is hard to compete with that Their aim is to grow and acquire users and become an import cog in bitcoin and financial worlds Once you get lets say to a few million to a hundred million users then you endup with all sorts of possibilities such as becoming a bank and offering loans (this alone coupled with a good database of users could be a money maker), offering checking/savings accounts, hell making it easier for users to invest in stocks etc (might be what Goldman interested...) and so on Remember the likes of Facebook and Twitter didnt have a "revenue model" at start either, look where they are now... edit: another possibility would be mobile payments (nfc or qr code) to any merchant accepting bitcoin of which there is a growing number thanks to bitpay, think of all the data that could be mined there, they can basically make the whole credit card network obsolete by bypassing it

ceejayoz 12y ago
> Remember the likes of Facebook and Twitter didnt have a "revenue model" at start either, look where they are now... Facebook's doing OK (they have the advantage of not locking themselves into being a simple 140 character messaging service), but Twitter's quarterly results were fairly abysmal.
bdcravens 12y ago
> Well bitcoin transactions are almost free (miners fee is what nowadays 1-2 cents regardless of amount?) as is. It is hard to compete with that You're talking sending Bitcoin from one address to another, not Bitcoin/fiat exchange. Apples to oranges.

IkmoIkmo 12y ago

Typical grow first, monetise later. It doesn't appear they have any business model at the moment, just churning VC money and trying to grow. They charge no fees for deposits, withdrawals, sending or receiving money, and their buy/sell spread is zero, and they're not known to advertise or sell user data nor do their terms mention it. I think it's best to think of it as someone trying to build roads all over the country in a world without cars, hoping to allow a car industry to explode. Once cars become mainstream, you can monetise the roads, sell tires especially made for those roads, offer driving schools etc. Speculating about their future... I think a Coinbase model is quite likely, Circle is known like Coinbase as a 'universal' company. Coinbase charges a bit on deposits, they have an exchange, a vault, an API. It's quite likely at some point we'll see remittance and financial products (peer to peer loans, derivatives), merchant services (payment processing), digital assets on a public ledger (e.g. replacing notary services or contracts with private-key signed documents on a public, unforgeable ledger) etc. There's lots of angles to monetise the facilitation of many products and services.

bdcravens 12y ago

I believe they have margin atop the Bitcoin price.