Cryptocurrencies have become controversial for many reasons. These currencies are volatile, and it is hard to tell who will support them and which authorities will refuse to accept them. There’s also a sense of immaturity in some segments, as many people post social media messages bashing some currencies, not to mention some currencies are promoted more as a joke. Increased worries about how cryptocurrencies are contributing to global warming only make things harder for some parties.
There is still a potential for cryptocurrencies to become more valuable in the digital commerce world. The walled garden approach may be a necessity for the industry’s future. It will bring in many retailers who might be interested in doing business with cryptocurrencies.
The walled garden approach entails buyers and sellers getting together through many settings or a singular platform. People can exchange currencies in the environment through one infrastructure that can support all these settings or other features. A digital wallet platform can be essential to the success of the process.
The setup allows for a space where people can handle their assets. While there are rules on who can enter a walled garden ecosystem, the platform still offers a useful system that everyone can follow.
Understanding How a Walled Garden Works
The idea of a walled garden sounds like it is restrictive, what with it being in a closed setup. But the system itself can be advantageous, as it provides a more controlled approach to managing cryptocurrency payments. It can create an organized setup that allows transactions to work effectively and in moments.
A walled garden operates as a closed ecosystem. The end-user is limited to whatever services or apps one can utilize. The end-user will be led towards specific apps or solutions for handling transactions or other activities.
For cryptocurrencies, the walled garden will entail people being limited to using a specific app or exchange to handle currency transactions. The ecosystem will support various cryptocurrencies and can handle as many apps or other platforms as it wishes. The walled garden operator has control over whatever it wishes to program or utilize.
What Organizations Could Use These Walled Gardens?
There are no limits over who could use these walled gardens to keep their setups up and running. One example to explore entails how PayPal is managing cryptocurrencies.
PayPal has an ecosystem where users can link their wallets to Coinbase. Customers can then buy currencies through the exchange. PayPal’s goal is to make these currencies accessible for shopping purposes. Customers can use the crypto items they have in their wallets and use them to pay for items through various participating merchants. PayPal has reported substantial growths in its user base and activities over crypto payments, especially as the system makes it easier for people to complete these payments.
The retailer and auction site eBay also has hopes to establish a crypto walled garden. eBay hasn’t participated in the crypto market since abandoning its support of Facebook’s Libra project a few years back. But eBay has expressed some interest in returning to the crypto field, particularly with an ecosystem that supports crypto payments. The walled garden system would likely entail eBay limiting people over what they can use for collecting crypto funds and moving them. But with eBay having so many retailers out there, the places where people could spend those assets would be varied and diverse.
Will Amazon Take Flight?
Amazon could also start a separate ecosystem where it can handle cryptocurrencies. As the world’s most influential retailer, Amazon has been at the forefront of impacting different transactions in many forms. The potential for Amazon to start accepting more currencies and to use a walled garden that links customers with various entities could be significant.
Upcoming new Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has expressed an interest in entering the crypto industry. But most people who use Amazon Web Services systems use it to manage data and not handle cryptocurrency payments. But AWS will support blockchain transactions soon and could start making use of Bitcoin and other currencies. Such support might push the crypto industry further, especially since Amazon has immense influence over the digital commerce environment.
Some places have already been using cryptocurrencies in their platforms. Newegg has been a longtime supporter of Bitcoin, and Shopify has allowed business operators to accept currencies of all sorts. Shopify even joined the Facebook Libra project, possibly linking it with a new currency that the social media giant might produce someday. Facebook has been trying to produce something new for a while, but whether it will come to fruition remains unclear.
The Walled Garden Is An Evolution
The walled garden approach that so many providers might use shows how the crypto industry has evolved over the years. The walled garden allows for more freedom to manage currencies. While there are rules as to what platforms can work and who people can contact, there is greater flexibility over what assets can work on the platform. More retailers and parties can link with one another if they stay within the same walled garden system.
The walled garden system is an evolution over the Facebook Credits platform from nearly ten years ago. Facebook Credits had a platform that didn’t offer much of an incentive to retailers, keeping it from going far. But today’s new walled garden setup makes it easier for businesses to grow and succeed. They can work with a more thorough infrastructure that includes more trusted sources for funds.
People looking for new ways to spend money should see how the walled garden ecosystem can work when handling cryptocurrencies. The physical and digital fields are uniting, as more people can use cryptocurrencies for payments now than ever before. There’s a great potential for more parties to complete transactions in secure environments. People who are interested in cryptocurrencies will need to see how these could work well soon.
