For many viewers, the ads are the best part of the Super Bowl. Football fans might disagree, of course, and there's something to be said for the halftime show, but when advertisers spend $7 million for a 30-second spot, they're incentivized to try to make their ads good. This year, a pair of celebrity appearances in crypto-related ads helped make cryptocurrencies a topic for discussion in millions of Super Bowl parties across America. Google Trends suggests that the ads caused a big local spike in interest in the topic, although perhaps not as big as one might think. Cryptocurrency has been a mainstream interest for a while now, but Larry David and LeBron James appearing in ads for crypto exchanges seals the deal. Crypto is here to stay, which is why creating a crypto-based business is a smart move for those who want some financial stability in 2022 and the years to come.
Capitalizing On The Crypto Trend
While you can invest in crypto, it's not necessarily the best way to capitalize on the growth of cryptocurrencies and related technologies. FTX and Crypto.com didn't earn the millions of dollars they needed to make their Super Bowl ads by buying Etherium and sitting on it. Instead, they created exchanges where people could easily transfer cryptocurrencies and collected a small fee from each transaction. These exchanges provided a steady stream of profit to their owners, even when the price of cryptocurrencies fluctuated, and they provided a valuable service to the community. Swapping Solana for Cardano can be a headache, even with an exchange, and Crypto.com and FTX have worked hard to make that process seamless and easy for anyone, even a crypto novice.
An Untapped Market
Crypto is still relatively young. While Bitcoin was nominally created in early 2009, the sphere of related technologies is very new. New and exciting altcoins are still being introduced and perfected, NFTs are just barely beginning to settle, smart contracts are still somewhat underexplored, and staking becoming more prevalent promises a great deal of change over the course of the coming months and years. These shifting developments promise plenty of opportunities for entrepreneurs to identify gaps in the market and develop products to fill them with a new product or service.
One business might create a digital magazine that demystifies new altcoins and tracks updates to platforms like Cardano, helping subscribers learn about hidden gems in the vast sea of altcoins. Another might create a service that protects novice NFT holders against theft and hacking, while a third might create an app that makes it easier for people to track and purchase specific NFTs. The concept of staking creates tremendous room for financial innovation, including simple arrangements that allow people to pool currency so they can stake more expensive tokens, loans that use staked currency as collateral, and services that insure staked currency against value drops during the staking period. These ideas aren't guaranteed to make you millions, but they do identify places where there's a need for a good or service on the market and attempt to fill that hole. If you'd like to make a successful crypto-based business, identifying your niche and figuring out what your customers want is the first step.
Building Your Business
A crypto business is still a business. No matter how decentralized or blockchain-based your core business model is, it's still vital that you go about the normal steps of starting your business in accordance with local laws. Register a corporation, keep accurate records, and be sure to consult a tax professional when tax season rolls around. The IRS does not care how you make your money, and the laws surrounding income in cryptocurrencies can be complex. According to insurance experts at cerity.com, you'll need to budget for benefits, social security, and workers' compensation insurance for your business. Spending a bit of extra money up front can go a long way towards protecting yourself against claims down the line, and it's much more common than you might think for workers of all types to receive injuries on the job. Doing the work to keep your business legal, insured, and future-proofed isn't glamorous, but it'll ensure that your business is still around several years down the line when your profits start to really ramp up.
Find Your Niche
A pair of Super Bowl ads for crypto exchanges helped cement crypto at the forefront of American discussion topics. Creating a crypto-based business is a great way to make money off of this behemoth trend while simultaneously adding value to the community around you. The best way to start a business is to identify a niche in the market that you can fill with a product or service, then deliver that product or service at a competitive rate. Think about what crypto enthusiasts want to do or purchase that they can't do or purchase currently, and try to deliver that.
Once you've figured out your niche, be sure to register your business properly, keep records, and pay taxes. These mundane, necessary activities are vital to keeping your crypto startup around for more than a few months. If you want to succeed, you'll need records to help analyze your profits, insurance to hedge against unlikely events, and a good tax expert to help you navigate the complications of receiving payment in the form of cryptocurrencies. With these things in place, you'll be on the right path to long-term crypto business success. In a few years, you may very well be putting on Super Bowl ads of your own.
