Digital Currency:The Story of My Life with Bitcoin

The change that altered my perception of Bitcoins

As a book vendor, It was really challenging because of the rapid changes in readers' preferences, and the trend was drastically affecting our business. In the mid-1980s, I started this vocation as an apprentice learning shelving, stocking, and marketing of books publications. At that time, people loved to read more prose, fiction, and poetry. I could still vividly recollect how I delivered hundreds of orders most weeks for fun readers who gladly paid without any issues.

However, around 1990, the regular readers' choice began to change. I had just started my shop after completing my apprenticeship, and I was still receiving stationery supplies from my boss. I noticed that a lot of our customers were either demanding more of sports journals, fashion bulletins, or political gazettes. It was a real challenge for the business because we were overstocked with what would not fascinate them. To stay in business, I just had to offer what customers wanted, and that worked. I also set up several tuck shops in strategic locations to maximize earning potential.

Confidently, I made my office a central administrative complex where all satellite vendors reported and remitted their daily cash sales. This new arrangement helped a lot in bringing my workers together. We usually gather the cash remittance to our vault against the next dawn when the publishers would come to collect their money and supply us new stock.

This central planning system worked for us until 2003 when banks in Nigeria started distributing debit/credit cards to their customers. This new development reduced our turnover drastically. Some of our customers who preferred cashless transactions stopped patronizing us because we had not yet embraced cashless banking. A few of our high volume customers also turned a new leaf as they preferred to settle bulk purchases with a cheque and sometimes bank transfer.

The change was a big blow to our modus operandi, and the last straw that broke our camel's back is the uncensored proliferation of internet-enabled digital marketing. How could the inconsiderate customers suddenly desert us quickly for unproven changes? The fear of shutting down made me seek the professional help. I found a business development consultant who already made landmark success with notable large enterprises that were around us.

How I set up an online store to receive Bitcoins payment

Mr Jack Williams was a business coach and an information technology specialist. One day, he said to me, "Boss, The greatest battleground of the 21st century is now the business world, where entrepreneurs compete for survival. I advise that you keep up with the trend if you must stay relevant in business". He went further to make me realize businesses that ignore the world of automation, digital marketing, digital currencies, and other tech developments will struggle to survive. He concluded that failure is inevitable for any businessman that fails to keep up with the fast-changing demands of the customers in this jet age.

I eventually agreed with Mr Williams to send his team of experts to begin our system upgrade. Although his counsel seemed like my best option, I was not too fond of his idea about digital marketing. He said it would enable us to receive payment in bitcoins through our websites and on Amazon. He also provided adequate training to my staff and me on the advantages of setting up a bitcoin payment gateway online. However, the memory of the sinister experience with e-gold digital currency still made me sceptical about fully embracing bitcoin as a currency.

I kept having thoughts of imminent failure and losses not visible to us yet. While wondering how would money be paid by customers whom I never saw face-to-face, he laid his hand on me to come and see the high traffic that our new online store had generated. The site was on bluehost.com, with a back end linking to Amazon.com. It also coupled with the various marketing campaigns launched across social media
platforms that he customized for us.

I was so amazed on the third day when my staff got so busy replying numerous tickets created. They came mostly from USA, Lithuania, Germany, Estonia, and few other unpopular places. On the fourth day of our digital marketing campaign, we recorded two different sales transactions amounting to $508.40. At this time, this number was equivalent to 0.0765 BTC on the remitano wallet. The books were released to the buyers from our electronic bookshelves after my sales representatives confirmed receipt of funds.

"Is this how easy it is? "I exclaimed as I was carrying out the audit trail analysis with Mr Williams on day 14 of the campaign. At the end of the month, the audit trail report showed earnings of 0.8234 BTC valued at $7,841 for whooping sales of 156 e-books. We have never achieved the digital sales volume on our offline trade, considering the duration, convenience, and delivery speed.

I needed no business mentor to tell me what to do about my ever-increasing cost. All these costs were reduced drastically by laying off some staff and closing down annexe offices. I still realized some residual income from the disposal of a number of our kiosks at strategic locations.

Conclusion

Looking back, I think I was wrong not to have considered bitcoin as a payment option earlier.

Thanks to my business coach, who made it possible to have all the upgrades. That gives us the present leverage above our contemporaries who only operate the conventional systems. Lastly, Remitano has done a beautiful job of setting up a peer-to-peer platform. It also supports the importing of external wallet address and the exchange of value in local currency.

Today, I am very wealthy without stress because of my fortunate story that I accept bitcoin in trade settlement.