Globalisation has created many opportunities, although these opportunities are not equitably shared. Developed countries are always ahead of developing countries, thereby taking a greater share of the benefits. On the other hand, most developing countries share the blame, as their governments are normally conservative. Technological developments in developing countries are lagging decades behind that of developed countries. Misplaced priorities and lack of innovation space in developing countries are some of the causes of the disparities. However, today I want to focus on how citizens of the world, irrespective of their countries of origin should defy conservatism and join the leading team. One way citizens of the world would benefit is through peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplaces.

A peer to peer marketplace, abbreviated to P2P marketplace, is a website that links buyers and sellers of products and services. Peer-to-peer markets are popular because they remove the existence of middlemen in transactions. Middlemen, normally, charge some high fees and create delays in the marketplace. Usually, buyers negotiate with sellers for prices of the goods and services. So often, some peer-to-peer marketplace sell goods and services on auction basis. Buyers normally bid; with the highest bidders getting the products. The owner of the marketplace only receives small fees from the sellers of the products. Since most of these marketplaces are not based on geographical area, there would be many buyers and many sellers, resulting in cheaper goods and services as compared to the conventional marketplace. Many peer-to-peer selling forums have been created on social media, through groups. In the recent past, many selling groups have been created on Facebook. However, we have renowned peer-to-peer marketplaces that operated on a global basis such as Etsy, Amazon and Fiverr.

There has also been an emergence of peer-to-peer marketplaces that use cryptocurrencies as means of payment. Popular cryptocurrencies that are used in transactions are bitcoins, ethereum and ripple, being the three most demanded cryptocurrencies. Many of these modern peer-to-peer marketplaces have included a social component, where participants can easily communicate with one another through live chats or messaging. The recent innovation has been the ability for active participants to earn crypto coins, just for being part of the marketplace, either as buyers or seller. The more active one is, the more one earns free internal token provided by the marketplace. This internal token is a cryptocurrency, which is usually an ERC20 (ethereum) coin. One of the current popular tokenised peer-to-peer marketplace is empowr, where thousands of goods and services are sold.

Let’s focus on another peer-to-peer marketplace of goods and services, which is Omnibazaar. On Omnibazaar, there are many types of products and services on sale. People pay for the goods and services in many ways which include the use of Ether (ETH), bitcoin (BTC) and Omni. The Omni is OmniBazaar’s internal currency. Therefore, apart from selling goods or services or both, a seller earns the internal token, which can be exchanged for other currencies such as bitcoin or ether. At OmniBazaar, people earn through five ways, which are: buying and selling of goods, dispute resolution (escrow), inviting others to join, publishing other people’s lists and mining of the Omni. The more activities one is involved in, the more one earns. The good thing which empowr and OmniBazaar have in common is affording ordinary people, with little or no income, to start their businesses. Therefore, entrepreneurs are borne and bred at these sites. By joining these two sites I have been nurtured into a successful online entrepreneur.

For more information visit OmniBazaar

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