Relica adds GPS treasure hunts to image-sharing app

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Does the idea of photos with treasure hunts attached sound like fun? Image-sharing app Relica has officially launched a range of GPS-enabled features, including a treasure hunt with Bitcoin value attached to images.

Relica announced the geolocation feature in a blog post in late June 2021, saying it was “literally putting Bitcoin on the map.” It will be unlocking major cities around the world one by one, based on demand in those areas.

Imagine being able to attach Bitcoin to a photo and place it anywhere in the world for friends to collect 🤯#Relica #GPS #Bitcoin #BSV

— Relica (@Relicaworld) June 29, 2021

The company will also be partnering with others in the BSV system, starting with tokenized collectibles and giveaways personality “Zatoshi“. Zatoshi will be leaving small Bitcoin amounts at various GPS locations. Users will need to physically visit those spots to collect and unlock the drops.

As part of Relica’s “Global Treasure Hunt,” users are invited to look for images of runes—each one with some Bitcoin attached to the image. The game is to collect three run images, and post your collection on Twitter. Winners will receive Relica’s first NFT. They plan to release more details of the competition in the coming weeks.

Gamifying image-sharing

The new GPS-based features signal a move for Relica into “gamification” territory, making use of BSV features like tokenization. It extends its appeal beyond just image-sharing and making money from posts, inviting users to get more creative about how they use the service.

In the future, Relica may add this feature for other users as well. Users could attach Bitcoin or other tokens to the images they upload. Companies could also use the features for advertising and promotion, posting an image related to an event or business and inviting people to visit it to collect something of value, like a discount or one-off collectible item.

You could make a VR chests with @OmniscapeXr on places so people can see prizes.
That would look awesome

— xstream (@sickkevi) July 5, 2021

Relica launched in early 2021 with a simple image/photo-sharing mobile app (that can also be used via a desktop browser). By linking it to a BSV wallet, users made micropayments of 1-10 cents to upload images and like or comment on others’ posts. That also allowed creator accounts to earn money from their posts, receiving a large share of those payments.

It also launched a “pay to view” feature in June 2021, letting popular creators put their posts behind a paywall and inviting others to pay before viewing them. The feature, Relica’s developers said, would encourage more valuable content like promotions, recipes, professional photography, tips and useful advice, and any other creative use posters could think of—however, Relica does not permit nudity or explicit material.

Earning money from social media had been an obvious use-case for Bitcoin from the start, particularly as its growth paralleled that of the social networking phenomenon. However deliberately limited block sizes on BTC crippled the development of paid networks, which rely heavily on small, fast, and high-volume transactions. Those apps are now flourishing once more on the BSV blockchain.

Watch: CoinGeek Zurich panel, Performance Advertising and Affiliate Marketing on BSV