Oh man this is great news. I've been trying to figure out a streamlined way to spend a couple rewards -- and one of the things I have in mind is an affordable drone, which would let me get higher quality content into my climbing blog. Instead of having to go through additional steps with exchanges, being able to get an amazon giftcard so easily is HUGE.
Thanks for taking a bit of a leap and testing it out. Despite my reservations about amazon, it's hard to ignore that they're the easiest way to get a lot of items. Hopefully a decentralized market place will start to get a bit of traction in this space -- but I think that's a long ways off for the time being.
Couldn't people be encouraged to start up online shops directly on steemit ? If steemit could offer us some sort of escrow service to encourage transparency and trust, direct exchanges via blocktrade maybe ?
I think this will happen eventually. Or at least online stores that can be listed to this site for transferring steem and sbd to gift cards. But imagine one day when there is a “SteemShop” and you can link your account and pay for items directly. Wow. The future looks great. I wish. Was a developer and could do these things
I think with the upcoming SMT update, there's going to be a lot of innovation happening in this regard. I can imagine a lot of markets developing on here in the coming year. I know for excample, that myself and @caitycat are interesting in setting up a photography / art print store, and I think it would amazing to have SMT based "certificates of authenticity" that are produced with each numbered print. Blockchain verified art.
We're in the future, y'all.
Yeah. That sounds pretty cool. The opportunities are endless
Good luck with that! Its like a whole new internet is opening up before our eyes !