The First-ever Bytom Payment in The Real World – Will This Lead to Mass Adoption?

Mass adoption soon coming to blockchain in shipping?Shutterstock

On  May 22, 2010, a bitcoin enthusiast, Laszlo Hanyecz bought two pizzas from Papa John’s for 10,000 bitcoins. Bitcoin’s price was of  $0.003 each at that time. Hanyecz pizzas would now be worth more than $60mn at current market prices. This kicked off cryptocurrencies real-world use as a means of payment.

Fast forward 8 years and we still are nowhere near mass adoption as a form of payment in the crypto and blockchain market. 2018 has been a nightmare year for investors as the markets tanked by more than 90% from their all-time highs with several projects put on hold due to the decimation of funds available. However, there seem to be some interesting solutions on the horizon and one of them looks to be appearing in the shipping and logistics world.

The coin is called Bytom (symbol: BTM ) and it is purporting to bridge the worlds of traditional finance and the blockchain with the purpose of supporting the interaction of multiple assets. It made its first real-world transaction in October 2018 and which took place on what is claimed to be the largest e-commerce shipping platform, Sea Rates

A payment for the consignment of goods from China to Korea has actually been successful with the use of the Bytom blockchain. The total cost was only 74 Bytom roughly USD 17 and this is, far less than through a payment made with US dollars for the same consignment

In December 2018, two months later, another consignment from China to Ukraine worth USD 5,452 was settled using Bytom. This transaction took place once again on the SeaRates platform and confirmed Bytom as a means of payment in a real-life use case. Which is something that is really needed in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space is mass adoption is really to happen.

This encouraged SeaRates to adopt Bytom as a means of payment and settlement tool thus opening an interesting opportunity in this sector.

SeaRates is supposedly one of the most established logistics company based in the UK. It has over 600,000 users, 40,000 carriers and 250,000 shippers. Its presence both online and online app attracts over 9 million requests from over 200 countries and territories around the world.

It now seems that SeaRates adopted Bytom to address problems such as exchange rate fluctuations and commission fees for US dollar payments. Bytom is the only cryptocurrency that is supported on the SeaRates platform which instantly translates into global adoption.

Site users who choose to make payments on the SeaRates website using cryptocurrency are able to check balances and trade history, print and receive freight bills, and most importantly, payments are settled in just a few seconds.

A pilot study demonstrated that a transaction using Bytom on SeaRates only took 0.3 seconds. In addition, there wasn’t any loss of value in the overall freight value after several USD exchanges with Bytom.

According to sources, SeaRates also works with banks in Malta. The Swiss and Bytom Blockchain set up a built-in exchange for real-time crypto-fiat transactions, which would enable both shipper and forwarder to execute instant a Bytom/fiat exchange with almost zero cost within the SeaRates online platform.

SeaRates is apparently also collaborating with Bytom to develop an escrow service using a smart contract on the Bytom Blockchain. The objective is to eliminate complicated and time-consuming international settlement processes.

At present, the global logistics of commodities depends mainly on shipping as a means of transportation, with the price considered as relatively low but these transactions take considerable time, during which shipping costs may increase along with the volatile exchange rate. 

A report in 2016 by Natixis shows that10% reductions in railway (2%), air (5.5%) and maritime costs (1.1%) would increase trade. Adopting Bytom as a means payment may effectively reduce the exchange cost arising from exchange rate fluctuations that may even be an effective catalyst to facilitate international trade. The technology still needs to be tested however the future does look pretty promising

source: forbes.com