With the BitDegree Platform already having thousands of students and a constant increase in teachers we're moving closer to the final product. However, there are still some hurdles along the way, and that's why the platform is still in BETA. Here's a breakdown of what the team is currently working on, why the BitDegree Token volume is still low and what it takes to reach mass adoption.
Three factors go into BitDegree mass adoption - instructors, students and businesses. All three have to be worked on at the same time. And each factor is dependant on the success of others.
1. Instructors Must Feel Welcomed.
To have a successful eco-system there needs to be a constant supply of new content. In our case, this content is provided by instructors', businesses and ourselves. We've created courses ourselves in the past. And we've partnered up with various businesses to create courses on the BitDegree platform as well. Most recent of which is the ORCA Alliance which will be creating courses on financial management.
However, the most significant influx of content comes from independent instructors. That's why we're creating a system where instructors would want to choose BitDegree over existing solutions. Providing them with a way to earn up to 99% of the revenue from sales, having open communication channels with the team or adding features they felt were missing elsewhere.
Our goal is to make the BitDegree platform as attractive for teachers as possible. So, they start using our platform instead of other solutions.
2. Students Must Get Value.
Students must feel like they're getting value from the courses. Otherwise, they won't buy the content. If students stop buying, teachers stop posting and this breaks the cycle. To ensure students get quality content and value, we're creating tools and coaching that is going to help BitDegree instructors make the material their producing better.
While we're working on improving the quality of services that BitDegree is providing we have chosen to make a large portion of the content free. This is so students can try out and provide valuable feedback.
That is why we've also added additional payment models. We want to test payment systems, what's stopping users from completing transactions, how willing are they to pay for the content we're offering and other information is being gathered while the platform is in BETA.
We've added BDG Token only payments earlier to see the impact it would have. Not many people were using this payment so we've adapted and implemented a FIAT gateway test system
Read More About Tokenomics Here
Our goal is to make sure that students have the most value possible. If we're offering better services at a lower price, it's natural that our userbase will witch from existing solutions and start using the BitDegree platform.
3. Businesses Must See a Sizable Userbase for Marketing.
To attract businesses for course sponsorships and course creations they must see an already established userbase. And, constant growth of students and teachers. With a large enough user base, BitDegree can be used as a hub for businesses to reach a user base that's willing to learn about their technology. Businesses are going to be the driving force of how students will be able to 'Learn and Earn'. That is why we're working so hard on real-life interest and adoption.
So far, BitDegree is way ahead of the pack with stable growth and more people using the service every day.
The BitDegree website is currently the 25th thousand most popular website on the Internet according to alexa.com. To put this into perspective Ripple is at the 26th thousand spot and Ethereum is at the 18th thousand spot.
4. When Volume???
At the moment, we're still testing the payment models. Since the BitDegree token is a utility our goal is to have every user who's looking to buy the BitDegree courses use BDG tokens. And token volume will increase naturally when more and more of the user base adopts it as the main payment method. Why hasn't this still happened?
Free Courses, Promotions, Confusion
As we're still testing the platform and gathering feedback we want as many users as possible. This comes at a cost of making a large portion of the content free. We believe that it's much more valuable in the long-term to have users who trust the service we provide, help us shape the service to their needs and later convert to paying users instead of forcing people to take a leap of faith and immediately become a paying user. This is part of why we're still housing free content and implemented additional payment models.
Additional payment models such as PayPal & Credit Card will be the catalyst for BDG mass adoption. If a user pays in FIAT or doesn't use the platform at all is a huge difference. As we can convert FIAT users into BDG users over time, but we cannot convert people that aren't using the platform into BDG Token users.
Market Manipulation
During our ICO we made it so, that there was no pre-sales or whales that can get the tokens in bulk. We've done so to leave the BitDegree Token in the hands of our community. Completely transparent, and void of any shady dealings. This is why we refuse to partake in any market manipulation or wash trading to boost our token statistics.
BitDegree is building a sustainable business with real-life interest. And we do not plan to stop working towards this goal. Businesses that spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to manipulate the market are not only deceiving their community but are hurting the cryptocurrency space as a whole. And we do not wish to partake in such practices. It is our belief that once we offer a great learning platform to the world, people who want to use the platform will be incentivized to use the BitDegree Tokens. This natural interest will build volume.
We're relying on real-life adoption, not sinking money into market manipulation to create fake statistics.
Current BDG Incentives
- Students that pay with BDG get a 20% discount.
- Teachers that use the BDG token don't have to deal with fraud, as there are no chargebacks. And, they get to keep 99% of the revenue generated by themselves.
- Users from all around the world get access to the courses faster, as there are no banks to deal with.
Conclusion
BitDegree has to make a platform that appeals to students/businesses & instructors. And all of this has to happen at the same time. Because each of the three groups cannot exist without the other. Bigger exchanges are a must for further token liquidity and making sure that students have more options.
However, talking about exchange platforms. It’s crucial to understand that we can’t simply pay exchanges millions of dollars and get listed. This is impossible because listings depend on more than just financial aspects. And we don’t agree with some exchange policies or requests that they ask us.
BitDegree doesn't partake in market manipulation. And we’re doing so in the best interest of everyone, as BitDegree is 100% legally compliant. When the regulations come, the worst thing that could happen is that a project faces legal consequences and is completely shut down, meaning all their assets are worth 0.
We would gladly open up the BitDegree Token trading on more exchanges if all of the requests are reasonable, we’re in no way incentivized to keep BDG off larger exchanges.
