Online marketplaces adopting digital currency payments such as Overtstock.com have been crucial in expanding opportunities and capabilities for Bitcoiners. Now CryptoThrift.com online auction marketplace based in Australia allows its users to buy and sell goods and services for digital currency as well. While it is sort of similar to eBay, everything you see here could be purchased for Bitcoin or Litecoin.
Last Friday, CryptoThrift.com surpassed 1,000 Bitcoins in sales since the new year and the best is yet to come.
CryptoThrift.com was launched in 2013 by two Sydney based developers Ahmad Aoun and Paul Screenand. Soon after a marketplace reached over 6,000 users offering to sell and buying souvenirs, gift cards, software, games and other general goods.
We were able to contact the founder of CryptoThrift and find out a little bit more about this online marketplace. “When we started CryptoThrift, there were only two marketplaces dedicated to Bitcoin, there were none which supported Litecoin. Both of which were operating in an anonymous yet legal manner,” said co-founder Ahmad Aoun to Cointelegraph, who added:
“We thought that bringing a marketplace which supports Bitcoin, Litecoin and other crypto-currencies might be the break the market needs, especially if we operate with complete transparency and register for tax purposes. Not long after that, both BitMit and Coingig closed down, making us the biggest Bitcoin and Litecoin marketplace and auction site.”
CryptoThrift.com follows a transparent business module and is registered with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). Also they use semi-automated hot and cold storage and utilize security and CDN services such as CloudFlare and MaxCDN.
The prices are displayed in BTC and LTC with the Dollar amount as reference. Real-time price tickers are displayed in the left hand corner with currency pairs BTC/USD and LTC/USD.
At one point, other cryptocurrencies were also available (FTC, XPM, MNC, MAX and WDC), thought “the market has proven that users were less interested in anything other than Bitcoin and Litecoin, which resulted in us removing all other coins and leaving those which users have more interest in”, explained Ahmad Aoun.
“We haven't closed the door in the face of other coins, we believe when a coin's market cap and interest is high enough, we will integrate it into CryptoThrift. We're continuously monitoring the market for when that day comes.”
Only CryptoThrift members may choose “buy it now” or “auction” sale formats. When you find something interesting but don’t want to buy it right now you may use the “watch list” function. It is also easy to search for other things to buy using the category browser or viewing the newest or most trending offers.
The fee policy requires that the seller pay a 2.5% flat rate or transaction fee on sold items across the site, regardless of the price or the category the item is listed in. The transaction fee is the fee the network charges to send the funds to the seller and is 0.0001 BTC or 0.0005 LTC. While buying on Cryptothrift is free, a 1% fee or transaction fee (whichever is higher as per above) is charged to the buyer if escrow was selected upon checkout.
“With cryptocurrency adoption increasing daily, CryptoThrift provides a necessary marketplace for buying, selling and trading goods and services worldwide for Bitcoin and Litecoin.”
While CryptoThrift is still a new platform, there is no doubt that it has a bright future ahead. So visit the onine marketplace and spend some bitcoins or litecoins on anything from a starbucks giftcard to 1,000 Youtube views or follow CryptoThrift at Facebook, Twitter or Reddit.