Crypto Mining Firm BitNile to Debut Marketplace for Goods, Experiences

BitNile, a crypto mining firm, plans to launch an online marketplace.

The platform will be dedicated to exclusive goods and experiences that can be purchased with bitcoin.

The marketplace is to go live March 1, 2023, and the firm is inviting shareholders and the public to register for it before the launch, according to a Tuesday (Dec. 27) press release.

“This has been many years in the making, and [we] are proud of the progress that [BitNile President and Chief Product Officer] Douglas Gintz and his team have made and look forward to becoming the premiere destination for exclusive goods and VIP experiences,” Milton “Todd” Ault III said in the release.

BitNile is a diversified holding company that focuses on acquiring undervalued businesses and disruptive technologies. Among its businesses are a data center at which it mines bitcoins and provides mission-critical products for several industries, and a licensed lending subsidiary that extends credit to entrepreneurial businesses, according to the release.

As PYMNTS reported in April, BitNile announced plans to fund up to $100 million in commercial loans for small, publicly traded companies which are secured by bitcoin. That was to happen through BitNile’s subsidiary, Digital Power Lending.

As PYMNTS reported Tuesday, 35% of tech-driven consumers prefer merchants that accept crypto, with 26% saying they would go so far as to switch merchants to shop where crypto is accepted.

Even among everyday consumers, 23% similarly said they prefer merchants that accept crypto.

Although tech-driven consumers — those who are usually the first to buy the latest connected device and the most willing to try cryptocurrency — are just 15% of the overall consumer market, the decisions they make about technology are often a preview of what will define mainstream consumer behavior in the next few years, according to “Shopping With Cryptocurrency: Tech-Driven Consumers Drive Market Acceptance,” a PYMNTS and BitPay collaboration.

To succeed at converting a broad cross-section of the consumer market into users of cryptocurrency as a payment method, merchants must pay attention to the different styles of tech usage among consumers and how that affects their willingness to use crypto at the checkout, the report said.

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