Luke Rohenaz on ‘Hashing It Out’ Episode 19: Micropayments, NFTs & the future of digital marketing

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TonicPow is a revolutionary BSV blockchain-powered digital promotion marketplace where anyone can be an affiliate and anyone can advertise their business by funding a campaign. Luke Rohenaz, TonicPow’s founder and CEO, is an absolute forward thinker in the digital market space and utilizes the capabilities of the BSV blockchain to provide a unique service to all.

In January, Rohenaz and I were on the “Blockchain and Crypto – Looking Forward to Web3.0” panel at the Affiliate INSIDER Summit and there were some key points made during the discussion. In this episode of Hashing It Out, Rohenaz covers some of those points and provides realistic perspective into what buzzwords such as Web 3.0, micropayments, NFTs and tokens actually mean for our future. 

TonicPow solves digital marketing pain points

Alleviating pain points faced in digital marketing has always been top of mind for Rohenaz and the TonicPow team. For example, one of today’s biggest challenges is keeping track of ad spend and avoiding a “black hole” situation, as he calls it.

“We have stats and reporting to show you how [an affiliate’s] performance is and what the traffic is like that they’re sending you, so you can make individual determinations and have a little bit more say in the relationships. And we do think of it that way a little bit more than some of the competitors do,” Rohenaz explained.

Another big challenge in digital marketing is payments—reconciliation of payments, speed of payments—but with TonicPow, its use of micropayments and instant payouts solves such issues for both advertisers and affiliates.

Web 3.0

“Web 3.0” is one of those buzzwords that people love to use but the majority of these people do not know what the term really means. According to Rohenaz, Web3 is not fully here yet, but Bitcoin and blockchain will play a significant part in its rollout.

“I think the early versions of it is what we see now, and its simple definition is that there’s an integrated wallet into the platform and the actions that you’re taking in the app are reflected on the blockchain,” he said.

“When you refer a sale, the moment that sale happens, your wallet’s dinging and you’re getting a payment,” Rohenaz added.

Rohenaz says that one of the “missing chunks” of Web3 is identity and that there will likely be some identity application coming, a point Phil Runyan of Hold Gaming made in the last episode of Hashing It Out. 

Rohenaz also pointed out how using blockchain with Web3 has the added benefit of everything being recorded into a ledger and timestamped, an insurance policy for users should there be any sort of disputes down the line.

Micropayments

As Isaac Moorehouse emphasized in the first episode of his “Tiny Payments are a Big Deal” series, micropayments represent one of the biggest innovations of Bitcoin, yet the capability is completely underutilized. TonicPow is the perfect example of an application that takes full advantage of micropayments, an exception to the rule.

“It’s really sad because it’s this massive whole segment of activity that’s just being lopped off…that’s just crazy to me. It just goes to show you how powerful this invention really is at the end of the day, if it could be that successful without some of the best parts,” Rohenaz pointed out.

It’s important to note that not all blockchain protocols are capable of micropayments—in fact very few—due to high and unpredictable transaction fees. When Rohenaz says “invention,” he is referring to the original Bitcoin (BSV).

“Now we have Bitcoin (BSV), but what everybody thinks is Bitcoin is this other stuff that doesn’t really work for micropayments. So it’s pretty funny,” said Rohenaz.

“It’s this giant blue ocean of utility and really useful things that we can do by starting to associate some of these actions that we’re already doing, like interacting on social networks or playing stuff on Spotify. There’s lots of opportunity for them to be monetized or small micropayments attached to them,” he explained.

NFTs

NFTs are booming and this buzzword is another example of a term that people use even though they do not fully understand the technology’s true value and potential. When asked about how NFTs can represent utility versus serving as just another speculative asset for trading, Rohenaz said there are some interesting things that can happen when you issue a token.

“If there’s a content creator, for example, or a musician or anybody who’s doing something on their own that doesn’t necessarily have funding for it or something like this, it’s a really interesting way for people to bootstrap so they can mint some token and then attach some kind of promises to that,” he said.

When it comes to TonicPow, we can expect NFTs to be integrated into their platform soon, but not in their typical form as a tradable JPEG or digital piece of art.

“What we’re hoping to do in the near future here is allow you to deposit various types of tokens into a campaign for distribution to promoters. So you don’t necessarily have to reward purely with BSV or maybe not with BSV at all. Maybe it’s just these tokens, for example,” Rohenaz revealed.

Tools to get started with BSV blockchain today

While all of this sounds rather amazing, how easy is it for those outside or on the periphery of the blockchain space to get involved?

“TonicPow is a great example of a tool that really helps people get started earning something. One of the things you could do, let’s say you have a website, maybe you don’t get a ton of traffic or whatever, but you could put a Tonic Pow widget on your website pretty easily,” Rohenaz explained.

“Look through the campaigns on [Tonic Pow], find stuff that you resonate with, that you think your people who follow you would like and just share some campaigns. There’s a lot of good starting points there didn’t used to be even a year ago,” he said.

In addition to TonicPow’s BSV onboarding tools, there are also applications such as CryptoFights and Haste Arcade that allow users to take advantage of earning BSV through micropayments, NFTs and more.

“There’s all this different stuff that you could do with Hand Cash wallet, there’s a lot of people having a blast over at the Relay market as well. So there’s a lot of different places to get in and to kind of get swept up,” Rohenaz added.