Monero is the first digital asset that will be supported directly. Customers can also make payments with a range of conventional methods including credit cards and PayPal.
Retail Row, the merchandise store for the online video game Fortnite, has started accepting Monero (XMR) as a payment method. The announcement was made by Riccardo Spagni, a prominent crypto community member, on New Year’s day.
Too cool: the Fortnite merch store (https://t.co/KNL4IFCFHk) lets you pay in Monero, so now you can purchase that sweet Durrr Burger onesie without your friends / family / coworkers judging you. https://t.co/XYs1NjGvGp
— Ric “el pony esponjoso” (@fluffypony) January 1, 2019
Spagni further specified that XMR payments were routed through Globee, a global crypto-friendly payment processor that accepts Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), Dogecoin (DOGE), Decred (DCR), Ethereum (ETH), XRP.
After the announcement, many crypto enthusiasts expressed their opinion through social media channels. Some believe that the initiative is “yet another part of the effort of Project Coral Reef, which was a merchant acquisition effort that was half-funded by the Monero community and half-funded by GloBee”. Some are skeptical of the Globee integration and are sure that “no one’s gonna use it.”
On Twitter, some users wondered why Monero was an accepted payment form, not Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap. According to Riccardo Spagni, Bitcoin is currently not allowed because of its “lack of privacy, but they’re considering Lightning Network because it restores *some* privacy to Bitcoin.”
Lack of privacy, but they’re considering LN because it restores *some* privacy to Bitcoin.
— Ric “el pony esponjoso” (@fluffypony) January 1, 2019
Privacy has become an extremely important issue as a result of hacks and disturbing reports of user data being misused by social media monopolies like Facebook, which has had trouble and numerous data-privacy scandals. After users learned that the social media giant had been selling their personal data without their consent to third parties for profit, the public’s trust in Facebook was seriously undermined.
Cheddar reporter Alex Heath said:
“A lot of people obviously don’t trust the Facebook brand right now, especially people in the crypto/blockchain world. A lot of them got into this industry because of the centralization and the data misuse of companies like Facebook.”
New Drive for Adoption
Fortnite is an online video game released in July 2017 by Epic Games, which has more than 125 million players worldwide. Fortnite’s merchandise store Retail Row has been in existence since July 2017 as well. In October 2018, the platform was valued at $15 billion. Retail Row supports crypto payments service GloBee, which allows customers to pay for services in Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC) as well as Ripple’s XRP.
However, Monero is the first digital asset that will be supported directly. Moreover, customers can also make payments with a range of conventional methods including credit cards and PayPal.
This move is a great way to start a new year’s drive for crypto adoption, with the key role of video games as a form of entertainment. Fans of video games pay attention to non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which can act as unique, secure, tradable items in games. In-game tokens, like Fortnite’s V-Bucks, could also perform pretty well. And, with the introduction of trading pairs, tokens could enter the broader ecosystem, allowing consumers, whether young or otherwise, to purchase BTC and other crypto assets for alternative use cases.
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