Netcoins allows retailers to sell cryptocurrencyhttps://business.financialpost.com/business-trends/netcoins-allows-retailers-to-sell-cryptocurrency
Netcoins Inc. (CSE: NETC) owns and operates a proprietary Virtual Crypto ATM software platform. We turn any device into a Virtual Crypto ATM, so that consumers can buy crypto easily in a familiar retail setting. Netcoins’ powerful software engine manages the creation of a BTC wallet, provides real-time quoting, exchange, ordering, and automated invoicing. Buy crypto in over 21,000 stores worldwide!
Hannah Bernard: Hi, I’m Hannah Bernard. You’re watching Market One Minute and I’m here today with Mark Binns of Netcoins. So, Mark, let’s start at the beginning. Tell us how Netcoins began and tell us exactly what it is.
Mark Binns: Yeah, Netcoins started here in the Vancouver area by two brothers about two years ago — Michael and Dominic Vogel — and what they saw was an opportunity in the market to help the average consumer buy or sell cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is becoming more and more popular, especially over the last number of months. It’s in the news all the time, but in the earlier days, even as early as middle of 2017, it was very difficult for someone to buy. They would go on-line. They might have to wire money, they’d have to upload an ID and then they might be only able to buy say $100 at once.
So, what they did is they built a software product called Netcoins and it is designed to help retailers sell cryptocurrency. So, they can put this software into a convenience store, like a 7-Eleven, or a Gateway Newstands, or even like an electronic store, or a beauty store, anyone with a checkout. And a consumer can walk in, walk up and say “hey I’d like to buy $500 of Bitcoin” and that retailer using the Netcoins software can sell it to them right there on the spot and all they need is an email address.
They don’t need to understand anything more about cryptocurrency. They don’t need to have a digital wallet — our software does everything for them. Emails them the cryptocurrency and they walk out of the store and in two minutes it’s done.
Hannah Bernard: They’re making it very easy.
Mark Binns: We’re making it very simple for the mass consumer to be part of the cryptocurrency economy.
Hannah Bernard: And how is Netcoins evolving. In what other markets are you tackling right now?
Mark Binns: Yeah, that’s a great question. So, we started out as a retail business as we’ve talked about. We’ve grown to about 21,000 different locations across Canada, Europe, Australia that you can walk into a retail store. But then we had consumers coming to us and investors coming to us saying, “I want to buy $100,000 worth of bitcoin or I want to buy $500,000 worth of bitcoin,” and you know bigger purchase, and you couldn’t do that in a convenience store. So, we opened up a private brokerage and we call it an over the counter business OTC brokerage and we’re enabling now these high net worth individuals, investors, even crypto hedge fund managers, crypto miners, to come to us direct and transact. Buy and sell both bitcoin and all sorts of other cryptocurrency’s as well. So that’s a new market that’s been becoming very successful for us.
And then finally we’re opening up a dealer brokerage business where we help the traditional brokerage houses in Canada, and soon abroad, sell cryptocurrency to their customers. So, this is the same place you’d go buy your GE stock, your Apple stock — we’re enabling them to sell cryptocurrency to their customers using our software on the backend. So, we’re working with them and we’re working with the regulators to get that set up, and we’re hoping to open that market later this year.
Hannah Bernard: Very exciting. How are you effected by the volatility in crypto prices which we’re seeing lately?
Mark Binns: Yeah, we actually really much enjoy the volatility in crypto pricing because when crypto is going up or down quickly that means people are buying or selling. And the way we make money is as a brokerage is we get a transactional fee on every trade. So, the more trades that happen the money we make and the more revenue we generate. So, we’ve seen some big days up and down in the past couple of months. Where you know if bitcoin drops $800 in a day — I know people never like to see things go down — but Netcoins has great days on those days. So, it’s really a benefit to us if anything as long as people keep trading.
Hannah Bernard: And are you going to add more coins to the platform and if so why is that important?
Mark Binns: Yeah, we’ve already started adding more coins. There’s more than 1,800 cryptocurrencies today and they are being created almost on a daily basis. They’re called alt coins usually, the more alternative coins. Other than the big five sort of major coins. And these coins need exposure and they need to be in markets so people can buy and sell them. So, we’ll list them and make them available on our platform. They’ll pay us usually for a listing fee, which is great, and then when people buy and sell those coins on our platform, we also make transactional fees on it. As we have more coins, we become more of a one-stop shopping place for a wider group of crypto investors. So, there’re multiple benefits and we rolled out our first alternative coin last week called Pareto and it’s been a great success, and we’re looking to add many more alt coins as we go forward here.
Hannah Bernard: It sounds like you’re positioned very nicely.
Mark Binns: We are, we’re in a good place in the market.
Hannah Bernard: So if we’re investors what are some catalysts that they can look forward to coming from the Netcoins stock?
Mark Binns: Yeah, there’s a couple of big catalyst. The first one would be this OTC desk that is really growing, and announcements tied to crypto miners, so we’re really becoming a great liquidity partner to help crypto miners sell the coins that they generate and they mine on a daily and weekly basis because we can do it very quickly — pay them out the same day and make it a very smooth process for them. So, this will really ramp up our volumes, our transactional volumes, these are large institutions that we’re dealing with. As we announce these deals that will be a great catalyst for the Netcoins company and the stock. And also, our crypto basically dealer/trader businesses I talked about with the traditional brokerage houses, as we launch that, that is a game changer for the whole industry and for us. There’s nowhere you can go traditional brokerage and buy cryptocurrency. Right now, you’ve got to go to a crypto exchange. But as soon as the average Joe can call up his trader and say “I want $500 worth of coin X,” that’s a big deal. That’s going to open up the market and expand the volumes and be good for the whole crypto market overall and especially us, obviously.
Hannah Bernard: That sounds like a great investment opportunity. Thank for being with us Mark.
Mark Binns: Thank you very much.
This story was provided by Market One Media Group for commercial purposes.