Cryptocurrencies have long passed the phase of ignorance. Most people including the naysayers from Wall Street now know that cryptocurrencies are here to stay. But the question remains, have regular people accepted virtual currencies into their daily lives?

Mass adoption is the biggest challenge facing any of the coins out there. Be it Bitcoin, Ethereum, or the other alts; the pain points remain the same. However, a few months ago, Verge Currency had a breakthrough to reach a large populous who aren’t in crypto. It became a mode of payment for the adult site network, MindGeek. Millions of people got the opportunity to use cryptocurrency as an alternate mode of anonymous payments. This inspired me to conduct a small study on the willingness of people to use virtual currencies like any other FIAT currency out there.

To Analyze the extent to which the roots of cryptocurrencies have spread in the world, Verge is the perfect example. An open source currency with a large active community and a growing list of Vendors accepting it as payment for goods and services. Apart from that, being in the core marketing team gave me access to many vendors allowing Verge as a mode of payment. The study aims to see if people are ready to use it just like any other fiat currency.

“Once we at Evolution Host understood the power of cryptocurrencies to grant freedom of finance to individuals, the choice was simple. We are big believers in privacy and freedom of choice and Verge meets these criteria.”

Mike Brown, Evolution Host

The Distribution

Until recently, the trading volumes on various exchanges determined its success. Fortunately, that’s changing. We can now measure the extent to which people are using cryptocurrency by analyzing the actual use for purchasing goods and services. This can form the new measure of success.

We can pick a set of variables from the universe of parameters that guide mass adoption. Here is the list that I have selected:

1. Accessibility: Its presence in the world
2. Domains: cryptocurrency can get you a variety of goods and services.
3. Competition: choices available to people for the same product.
4. Ease of procurement: The ability to easily buy things with cryptos.

The distribution and circulation of a currency is dependent on the above parameters. This is possible because of all the vendors who give the option to their customers to buy something with cryptocurrencies.

“Some of the products we sell have a low margin. Accepting Verge over regular credit cards help improve that margin for some of those orders.”

Jeremiah Selander, CEO,  Baby Moss 

Vendors

Vendors are the bridge between cryptocurrencies and mass adoption. They facilitate the trade and encourage a larger population to adopt virtual currencies. Verge has a vast array of vendors selling all kinds of products and services.

“We encourage payments with Verge by running offers that include 3 free items with your order if you pay with Verge. In the future, we would like to donate to the same causes that verge donates to.”

Christian Sutton, Highlife Goods

On the verge website are over a hundred vendors listed, who accept Verge as a mode of payment for their goods and services. I visited each of their sites to verify if they do accept Verge. And yes, all of them do. But that wasn’t the only intention. I wanted to know the things that a consumer can buy. My discoveries were just phenomenal.

We can make the following initial deductions. These are:

1. Verge Currency can get you products and services.
2. A majority of vendors accept at least one other cryptocurrency apart from Verge.
3. A majority of vendors sell through their websites rather than through a Brick and mortar store.

A Beautiful Diversity

Vendors of Verge are distributed all over the world. However, as of today, there are two concentrated regions where people can more easily make purchases with cryptocurrencies. First is the Netherlands and second in the United States of America. This can probably be attributed to the willingness of the governments to allow virtual currencies to be used by the people.

“Accepting crypto as a payment option was a no brainer. we wanted to partner with a cryptocurrency that had a strong community, solid history and an exciting future. That was Verge.”

Joel Schuberg, Blunt Umbrellas

The Services

You can purchase a variety of services with Verge. Right from IT services like application development and infrastructure development to legal services. It’s available.

Video Streaming Services cater to people all over the world. With Verge, people from across the globe can buy movie streaming services from Quantvm or satellite TV from Flix TV.

IT services and video production studios are available for organizations from Germany, United States, and Spain.

Corporate bookings for adventure sports in Spain, booking private jets in the United States and hiring construction and architecture services in the Netherlands, all possible with Verge.

“Incorporating faster payment technologies like Verge, which offers ultra-low processing fees and near instant transaction speeds, allows us to further increase the speed at which our company is able to process payments”

John Hanby, Fractal Visuals

But it doesn’t stop at services for companies. Personal services like wedding photography in the Netherlands, dance classes in Mexico, home cleaning services in Australia are accepting verge and bringing the power of cryptocurrencies to the doorsteps of a typical household.

The second largest domain in which Verge currency seems to be popular is the web hosting and VPN services industry. 14 Organizations around the world in this space are allowing bloggers like me to host websites and servers and pay for it via Verge.

 

E-commerce

 

E-commerce has paved the way for the current generation to purchase the daily necessities with ease. Many E-commerce sites are accepting Verge Currency.

Premium specialized e-commerce stores like Crypto-Emporium, Watch Wizards, and Endeavor Wood Works are supplying Verge-backed goods to the high-end market.

“Verge has quick transaction times and has a large community. I met Justin and loved everything he had to say and we decided to accept payments with Verge”

Bennett S, Dioxyme

Blunt Umbrellas, an umbrella manufacturing company from Australia accepts only Verge among all the cryptocurrencies out there. Many such vendors who accept Verge are fostering its growth as a currency.

Crypto Whale Clothing, FrankAndBeans, Petecho, and many more apparel e-commerce stores are gaining a lot of traction in the fashion space. All of them accept Verge.

Singapore has six general e-commerce stores, and The United States has large-scale marketplaces for anyone to sell almost anything.

1. Sardis Marketplace
2. 4 Coin Gigs – Buy and sell services with cryptocurrencies

 

The Journey Continues

Verge definitely has a lot of real-world use cases and can bring fast; privacy focussed transitions to every person around the globe. Vendors list will keep growing; there is no doubt.

“The trends now are such that customers do not want to spend the cryptocurrency. Instead, they want to just HODL. This behavior hurts the vendors who accept that currency.”

founder, Pex Peppers

It’s not just about the vendors. We as users need to use the currency and that is extremely important. Without us using it, the growth will be a challenge. 

If you want to join us on this journey and accept Verge as a mode of payment for your business be it online or a store, get in touch with our Core Team member Mihael: [email protected]

Resource

Here is a link to the spreadsheet I created while reading up about the vendors of Verge. 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mBwwipW3h0Zv6BQE9mTU9ZX0wnDuxgWSWplI2Ve21kU/edit?usp=sharing