It’s easy for outsiders looking at the crypto industry to get all tied up in the tech lingo, but crypto pioneers will tell you there’s much more to the industry than its cutting-edge tech tools. For industry leaders, crypto’s central goal of building communities is as (or more) important as the innovations tech tools like blockchain bring.
Crypto leaders are not only enthusiastic about the ways industry technology can smooth and tighten business transactions, but they’re also proud of the intrinsic ways that not only they, but also their followers, can be rewarded. Below, 13 members of Cointelegraph Innovation Circle share some of the significant strategic advantages business leaders can realize through crypto.
Sharing their success with followers
Through crypto, business leaders can leverage monetization — not for personal gain, but for that of their followers. Never in the history of business has there been a more seamless way to share in the success of an early-stage company, and smart business leaders now have the opportunity to leverage tokenomics to incentivize their users. It is said that we are not money-driven, but a bit of extra cash in the right hands goes a long way! – Sheraz Ahmed, STORM Partners
Elevating customer feedback and influence
One of the rallying cries of the Web3 movement is community: community ownership, community voice and community participation in the creation process. Tapping immediate customer feedback and elevating your customers to the level of members instead is a huge win for smart brands. A simple approach for brands would be to allow fans to customize the logo and mint the winning submissions as NFTs with perks. – Gavin Gillas, Project Venkman
Establishing themselves as industry leaders
Right now, businesses can establish themselves as industry leaders and lead by example. Many different companies pride themselves on being at the forefront of their industries by having the most advanced tech. By embracing crypto within your industry, you can live up to your words and evolve your business to the next level. – Tim Haldorsson, Lunar Strategy
Rewarding value-adding community members with ownership
In the Web3 world, community is key. Businesses that fail to cultivate strong communities will be crushed by those that do. The first step is making it easy for like-minded individuals to discover you and get involved. The second step is to reward community members who add value with ownership via governance tokens. If you get this right, the community thrives and magic happens. – Willy Ogorzaly, FOX Foundation
Developing truly effective customer loyalty programs
The biggest advantage that crypto has is cost-effectiveness and speed, especially for cross-border sales. Implementing loyalty programs via crypto and allowing users to monetize the points earned by converting them into fiat is something to explore. Loyalty programs have failed in the past as users could not really do anything with the points earned, but in crypto, that problem can be solved (to an extent). – Vinita Rathi, Systango
Reducing merchants’ fees and minimizing payment fraud
For businesses, accepting crypto payments instead of credit cards could reduce merchants’ fees, making it a cheaper form of payment for both businesses and consumers. Additional benefits businesses can expect from crypto payment methods include added security, traceability and speed; reduced fraud; and protection from chargeback fees on disputed credit card charges. – Shiran Herzberg, eToro
Increasing transparency and smoothing transactions
Business leaders can take advantage of tokenization and leverage it to increase transparency and smooth business transactions. They can get started by tokenizing internal documents and eventually move to tokenizing such things as charitable contributions or carbon offsets. – Amanda Whitcroft, Panda PR and Marketing
Incentivizing productive behaviors
A huge strategic advantage crypto has over non-blockchain-powered projects is the ability to reward the right people — those who are adding the most value toward business goals. Transparent on-chain processes can lead to more productive behavior, where customers, vendors and employees can be incentivized to follow a prescribed process to achieve a common goal. – Joe Roets, Dragonchain
Building stronger customer relationships through nonfungible tokens
Every business leader craves strong relationships with their customers, and crypto, specifically NFTs, can offer them. Whether it’s an individual artist, small business or massive corporation, the range of utility, community and collectability NFTs feature today can foster amazingly unique and novel relationships with their users/buyers, and that can be a big strategic advantage. – Dan Novaes, EARNFT NETWORK
Easily raising capital
The ability to raise capital with a piece of (digital) paper is a massive advantage for all crypto leaders. This is similar to the early tech startups that raised millions with just a website in the late 90s. While a working product certainly makes you stand apart, in most cases, getting started with initial capital just requires a credible team, a whitepaper and a futuristic website. – Dev Sharma, Blockwiz Solutions Limited
Extending their ‘teams’ through community engagement
Community engagement is definitely something business leaders can leverage through crypto, especially if their business intends or plans to launch a DAO token. Those in crypto communities are not only investors but are also highly engaged customers who will usually go through a lot in order to see a business and its leaders succeed. As our CEO says, you can think of them as your “extended team.” – Tomer Warschauer Nuni, Kryptomon
Building social capitalism systems
The concept of microtransactions didn’t exist until these new decentralized ledger technologies made it cheaper and faster to send smaller amounts of value more frequently. Lifestyle brands of the future will incorporate social governance and social earning to create an ecosystem based on social capitalism, where the world can share and exchange value on its own terms. – John Wingate, BankSocial
Sharing a narrative of empowerment
Through crypto, business leaders can essentially leverage a narrative that empowers individuals. At the heart of all crypto is a central narrative regarding personal responsibility and equitability between people and systems. – Dylan Dewdney, NFT3
This article was published through Cointelegraph Innovation Circle, a vetted organization of senior executives and experts in the blockchain technology industry who are building the future through the power of connections, collaboration and thought leadership. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Cointelegraph.
Learn more about Cointelegraph Innovation Circle and see if you qualify to join.