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Chris Tramount, Chief Executive Pleb of Scarce.City & SatsCrap AMA 🤟
30.2k sats \ 28 comments \ @ctramount 18 Nov 2022 bitcoin freebie
Class of 2017 Bitcoiner.
Before Bitcoin, industrial engineering and business stuff in traditional retail and ecommerce.
Went full time Bitcoin in March 2020 when Aryan Jabbari and I started Scarce.City, a marketplace for Bitcoin art & collectibles.
We've just launched SatsCrap.com, a marketplace for selling anything (legal :) for bitcoin.
Happy to give 🌶️ takes on:
All things Bitcoin commerce Managing a Bitcoin-only business The Bitcoin Arts NFTs (cringe) on Bitcoin are cool Bitcoin macro, philosophy, cosmic stuff The Bitcoin/Lighting app ecosystem & UX And anything else not too techy for my smowl brain
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185 sats \ 1 reply \ @plebpoet 18 Nov 2022
what has surprised you about selling bitcoin art?
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43 sats \ 0 replies \ @ctramount OP 18 Nov 2022
The biggest thing is the creative talent devoted to bitcoin. Stealing from my previous comment:
"when orange pilled, people want to do whatever they can to earn bitcoin and support the movement. for creatives, that's making art"
I'm also constantly impressed by the devotion of the collectors. Some of them have collections that could complete a full gallery or even museum and I wouldn't be surprised to see some of them make that happen.
It would be super dope to see the artworks we've auctioned exhibited in meatspaces throughout the world.
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196 sats \ 4 replies \ @F 18 Nov 2022
Why do you choose to list items on satscrap first and foremost in a shitcoin, USD, instead of the hardest money in history, bitcoin?
Wouldn't it make more sense to first list the amount of bitcoin for each item, and then under that have the USD equivalent?
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113 sats \ 1 reply \ @ctramount OP 18 Nov 2022
That's the approach we take for Scarce.City, all prices are in sats/btc.
For SatsCrap, we want buyers and sellers to easily compare prices with fiat marketplaces because our goal is to offer the lowest prices on the internet.
Some SatsCrap goods also have costs associated with them, which are obv in fiat terms so sellers need to make sure they're not losing money on the sale when the hardest money in history is especially mispriced ;)
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150 sats \ 0 replies \ @F 18 Nov 2022
It just seems like you should change the name then, if the amount of sats for each item is listed as secondary in importance. I think the website should be called "dollarscrap" instead maybe? How can you call it satscrap when I don't even see sats listed anywhere on the main page? At the very least, you should have sats listed on the main page underneath each item's price in USD.
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10 sats \ 1 reply \ @thrown 18 Nov 2022
Nobody really knows how much bitcoin is worth though. Theoretically one bitcoin could be 10 thousand to 10 million.
You need an anchor for people to conceptualize. Like how many apples does it cost
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22 sats \ 0 replies \ @F 18 Nov 2022
That's why I said put the USD equivalent underneath. But I think we should be thinking in bitcoin first and foremost.
I understand the whole point of these websites is to help drive adoption and onboard people, so there will always be some amount of USD shitcoinery going on to merge people out of the fiat system slowly. But having said that, I don't see sats listed anywhere on the main page under items. The amount of sats or bitcoin should be more present, atm it just seems like a regular sell-your-stuff-for-dollars website.
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134 sats \ 1 reply \ @thrown 18 Nov 2022
Have you researched any interesting ways to sell online without one party needing to give their address for shipping?
I could imagine some kind of zk proof or blind escrow system maybe where the buyer doesn’t need to fully dox themselves…
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33 sats \ 0 replies \ @ctramount OP 18 Nov 2022
There are remailer / po box solutions that we fully encourage. That initiative has to be taken by the buyer.
I guess you could get clever with hiding the address in our database (we already take steps to address that) but the address would still be exposed to the seller/shipping carrier.
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134 sats \ 1 reply \ @0335225260 18 Nov 2022
How can art support bitcoin education?
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43 sats \ 0 replies \ @ctramount OP 18 Nov 2022
Artworks are essentially memes. When done well, they communicate complex messages in an instant. They can also be instantly distributed to the masses over the interwebs
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134 sats \ 1 reply \ @21JCLP 18 Nov 2022
a lot of artists making art about bitcoin, this is really amazing...
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33 sats \ 0 replies \ @ctramount OP 18 Nov 2022
yah it's something I'm constantly amazed by. there's an incredible amount of creative talent devoted to Bitcoin.
when orange pilled, people want to do whatever they can to earn bitcoin and support the movement. for creatives, that's making art
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134 sats \ 2 replies \ @TheWildHustle 18 Nov 2022
Might cop that NorthFace jacket,
Have u considered adding auctions?
Have you thought about the api game, making it easier for blogs/sites to offer a Shopify like experience over lightning?
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43 sats \ 1 reply \ @ctramount OP 18 Nov 2022
We definitely plan to add auctions once we get steady eyeballs on the site.
Something we've learned through Scarce City is that auctions with high starting/reserve prices, while sometimes warranted, are kinda lame.
It could be cool for SatsCrap auctions to be no reserve only. To enable that, we need to make sure auctions get enough exposure.
We'll see about the api game. I think there's a huge benefit in attracting buyers to a single destination, related to the point above.
That Northface is some cozy crap. I've given it a couple looks myself...
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TheWildHustle 22 Nov 2022
Checkout the whatnot app/purse.io too
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134 sats \ 3 replies \ @kr 18 Nov 2022
satscrap looks really cool. what is your strategy for scaling the platform to onboard a critical mass of users?
why take the approach of letting any user sell anything vs. starting with a focused geography or a single item type for people to sell?
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99 sats \ 2 replies \ @ctramount OP 18 Nov 2022
Great question!
The strategy is to make it as easy as possible for Bitcoiners to sell their crap and earn KYC-free bitcoin. Bitcoins love bitcoin and put a premium on receiving them off-exchange.
So by making it easy for them and incentivizing them to sell for cheap (thru extra exposure), our goal is to offer the lowest prices on the internet. Cheaper than ebay, poshmark, etc.
If we can do that at scale, there's a pretty strong value prop for buyers to scoop up deals, even if they just plan to sell on ebay at a higher price.
We don't want to constrain product/location because we want to be surprised by what people sell. We really want to target Bitcoiners in emerging markets, for example. One of the benefits of not relying on traditional banking is we're NOT constrained by geography, while fiat marketplaces are. There's a unique opportunity to create a truly global marketplace.
I'm super excited to see what kind of crap people in Pakistan (for example) list for sale since they haven't had a great way to sell crap to people in developed places before.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr 18 Nov 2022
makes sense re: not being constrained by the different geographies that fiat markets are, but at some level doesn’t the shipping fee/time delay impose a restriction on geography?
i.e. if it costs $50 for me to ship a product overseas, doesn’t that price out a big chunk of would-be foreign buyers?
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91 sats \ 0 replies \ @ctramount OP 18 Nov 2022
For sure it does. International shipping rates vary wildly from country to country. Some countries subsidize costs while others seem to add extra tax to make shipping more expensive.
SatsCrap probably won't be appealing to countries in the second group but we think there's a big enough market in the 1st.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 18 Nov 2022
What advantages does bitcoin commerce have over trad commerce? What are some of the challenges with doing bitcoin commerce vs trad commerce?
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182 sats \ 0 replies \ @ctramount OP 18 Nov 2022
The biggest advantages of bitcoin commerce is that it's natively global and it enables a more seamless user experience -- no linking bank accounts and there's less reason to require registration/login in general.
The challenges are many people who hold bitcoin still aren't comfortable transacting it. The wallet, etc infrastructure has a way to go to lower the barrier but it's mostly people just going through the motion 1 time. Good thing is when they do, it's a magical experience.
Another challenge is many people don't WANT to spend their bitcoin (for good reason). So bitcoin does not make sense for many commerce categories and I don't expect that to change soon. The categories that do make sense so far:
special items that the seller will ONLY sell for bitcoin (art) digital items that are also transacted over Bitcoin (Rare Pepes, etc) micotransactions that aren't practical over fiat rails (stacker new for example) items that are priced lower because they're only available for bitcoin -- this is what we're testing at satscrap.com
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 18 Nov 2022
Are you all bitcoin-only on the backend, e.g. employee comp etc? If so, how do you do accounting/taxes/etc?
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175 sats \ 0 replies \ @ctramount OP 18 Nov 2022
The business has fiat expenses as do people which mean comp is also in fiat.
We raised some fiat funds last year so we've used that for expenses so far.
I've never liked taxes but experiencing them as a business owner, especially a bitcoin business owner has been jading. It's a very expensive and time sucking nightmare.
I wish I could get into the details here but it's too much. Maybe on a future pod or something.
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66 sats \ 0 replies \ @ctramount OP 18 Nov 2022
Thanks for the questions all! I got to run for now but I'll check back later and get back to any additional questions
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Play_to_earn 19 Nov 2022
it's amazing
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 18 Nov 2022
re: satscrap. How do you plan to prevent people from selling illegal items?
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275 sats \ 0 replies \ @ctramount OP 18 Nov 2022
Sellers pay a refundable listing deposit (10% of their listing price) that's meant to keep them accountable for not listing illegal items and following the rules of the sale.
For reference: https://satscrap.com/seller-guidelines
Of course they're immediately refunded the deposit when they cancel the listing or when they deliver the sold item.
Sats as collateral means we don't need a bunch of invasive personal info from the seller and it enables a much easier/faster listing process as long as you're familiar with transacting BTC (esp over LN).
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