What Will Fuel The Next Large Expansion For Digital Gold Currency?
The concept of digital money is not new. In fact as we’ve seen in the past months, its becoming more and more refined into what could almost be called a ‘retail marketing art form’.
One digital currency cannot dominate the globe and even a dozen different types is still too small a number to predict will lead the global market. It now seems the future will offer hundreds of different private online currencies and means of asset transfer. Each of these may be used for different reasons with some mutually exclusive of others and some in direct competition with each other. Perhaps its accurate to say that different brands of digital money will circulate with the public.
Which ‘brand’ you use could be directly related to your jurisdiction or your thoughts on freedom, age group, language, religion, local currency, banking relationship or even your sexual preference. Yes, sexual preference, lifestyle or what ever you might want to call it.
While you may not find a large population of gay and lesbians Internet users in Iran, or at least that’s their party line lie, this very large and wealthy market segment is a force in any retail industry. By accident, I found this great financial blog QueerCents choked full of good personal financial information from…you guessed it gay and lesbian person’s. As Nina words in in her Introduction to Queercents
“Money spends the same whether it is carried in a purse or a wallet.”
This got me thinking, how about an online digital currency for the gay and lesbian community? Its an already large built in market of very loyal customers…..keep watching I’ll bet we see one sometime soon. I’d consider that a ‘brand’ of digital currency.
Clearly, digital money has expanded globally in the past several years and will continue to do so in the coming decade.
Where can we expect future growth within the digital gold industry?
What’s the next big market on the horizon for DGCers? Will this growth start from an age group, a jurisdiction or some other random variable not yet on the financial horizon?
IMHO, I think the smart money (the Webmoney) should now be looking forward to the future and where they can expand their empire. I feel its important to try and predict where future growth and income will appear and directly cater to those customers.
What drives DGC expansion?
If tomorrow, you were to start a digital currency business backed by precious metal, what would drive your growth? Who is your target user?
Since we already recognize that NOBODY operating a digital gold currency advertises in the main stream media, except GoldMoney and those are highly targeted for Kitco visitors and ‘goldbugs‘ like me, I think its safe to say that we may not be able forecast future DGC growth by tracking newspapers, magazines or billboard ads.
At least that is what I thought until I read my friend Oluniyi David Ajao’s blog. David lives in Africa and keeps a close eye on the everyday local uses of e-gold and other digital gold currency. He has an excellent post on the growth of e-gold use in Nigeria. In fact he says that on a recent trip he found a local Nigerian city he found many offline ads for using e-gold, which is the first time I can remember off line ads for any digital gold currency.
It seems to me that jurisdiction, local financial methods or even bank availability could create some welcome digital gold niche markets. Nigeria is a good example. Additionally, possible future integration with the very popular online virtual game reality worlds like Entropia Universe, Second Life and Eve offer even a fastest path to widespread use and success.
Where will the next growth take place in digital gold currency and why? What do you think?
