Aubrey Strobel on how Lolli lets shoppers earn bitcoin

0:22lolly all about lolly is simple we're just trying to make Bitcoin more accessible to the masses and we found the easiest way to do that is to give people Bitcoin by shopping online so the websites lolly comm you can go on there and shop from over a thousand merchants and brands places that you're probably already shopping and earn fractions of the Bitcoin for

0:47free so you don't even have to change any of your normal behaviors okay that's all that's great and I did read into the rewards and it showed up to 30% Bitcoin back you know at the very top and I'm guessing that's not the average but that sounds very lucrative and if you're already doing the shopping anyway why not right so how exactly does lolly

1:09work you know how do you get Bitcoin back and what is sort of the more average return that you're gonna see or discount you're gonna see for getting Bitcoin yeah so our average return is around 79% back on your purchases so some retailers offer more some offer less it kind of disciplines we make we have direct partnerships with all these retailers so we're negotiating increases

1:33all the time on behalf of our customers but yeah I think people have a little bit of confusion around how our business model works and it's really simple we're bringing in money revenue to these companies and so they pay us or incentivize bring customers in and then they pay us and we split that check with our customers and send Bitcoin back to their wallet so yeah it's it's not that

1:59crazy it's just what we come to an incentive ization for the merchants for the customer and for us well it seems like a really ideal way to get a coin or get your first Bitcoin for people that aren't really familiar with Bitcoin and cryptocurrency and how to hold them and store them and of course they're already gonna be doing shopping so you know is this an ideal

2:21way or are you seeing a lot of the customers that are using lolly are very new to cryptocurrencies yeah we have a lot of new users and that's the point right we want people who are looking to own Bitcoin for the first time but maybe they're afraid of mining that's that's not going to be a lot of people's first option and you know I think we all saw this industry have a lot of people join

2:47exchanges in 2017 and they kind of just left their money there Wally actually has of the most active wallets because people are shopping and buying all the time and you even actually normally think that way but yeah we have a bunch of needy users and it's it doesn't feel like you're using the technology and that's the brilliance of Wally like you shouldn't really have to be a technical

3:09person to own Bitcoin we're lowering the barrier to entry for people who just I'm shopping online I'm gonna go buy a flight and I'm gonna get Bitcoin back to that I mean I think it's a pretty universal way to bring Bitcoin to the masses and that's really interesting that you've partnered with these retailers and these brands and then you're able to give Bitcoin back

3:30now I'm curious when a regular user is shopping those retailers aren't accepting Bitcoin themselves are they you're actually just put purchasing normally through your credit card or is it both so the some of these retailers may accept Bitcoin but that's that's not related to us we're just we transfer that check that they give us into Bitcoin and then we purchase it and buy

3:56it for our customers and send it to their wallet so a lot of these you know at least some of the bigger partners and brands they're I think a little still wary of Bitcoin but I think we're kind of like letting them dip their toe in the water and kind of be in the Bitcoin space without having to directly accept it as a payment no yeah well you mentioned that you've already partnered

4:21with a thousand different brands which is crazy but there are tens of thousands of brands out there how are you continuing to grow the partnerships at lolly and you know are there more incentives for bigger brands to come and join in yeah I think the more that people demand Bitcoin the more incentives that these companies have to get involved in this space and I think

4:45you know it's kind of funny we have a lot of followers that will tag these companies and ask them to join lolly and it's when they put when we put the pressure on them I think they kind of slowly kind of get involved and there's a lot of companies that are really excited about partnering with us like bitcoins not weird to them they're excited to be a partner and a lot of

5:05people are really proud partners so Alex the CEO of lolly he has a lot of really great relationships he comes from an e-commerce background so we had a lot of really strong relationships from basically the jump of Wally it wasn't something that we had to really build up which was nice because we I think when we when we first launched and August of 2018 we had about 500 merchants already

5:28on board so that was great and so now we're just continuing to develop these relationships and pitched hard areas and see if they'd like to partner with us yeah well that's great to hear and throughout the first few months of 2020 there was a lot of more online shopping and a lot of people are locked down from the pandemic did you see an influx of growth in the

5:51lolly platform because of this as well we saw a ton of growth we had more people shopping online and referring their friends to lolly than ever before and I think that was you know a little bit new part for grocery shopping as well people you know couldn't go for a little bit into the store to actually purchase their groceries so that brought people to change the behaviors and have

6:17to order groceries online and we're partnered with Safeway and Albertsons and bongs and a bunch of other big grocery chains across the country so you could actually order your groceries online go pick them up and have this contactless service through lolly by proxy and earn Bitcoin through that so I think a lot of people were finding new ways to shop buy things have it sent to

6:39their house if they can go to the store so yeah it was it was actually a really obviously a horrible time for the economy and or most of the world but we've been doing okay yeah that's good to know and yeah like one of the questions I have about these platforms you get a lot of new users come in sort of like you mentioned with exchanges where everyone signs up

6:59and then you know they sort of lose that you know the novelty wears off but with lolly you're continually as you purchase you're always accumulating more Bitcoin so do you see lolly as you know separated out from users that come on they actually stay on they continue to shop because they're always going to be receiving Bitcoin or do you see users that just use it once and then they sort

7:22of lose the novelty of it yeah I think people who are a little I guess more new to the space and new to Bitcoin they might need to be educated a little bit more on the benefits of Bitcoin and it's interesting that people who started stacking stats or earning that climbeth lolly in like just you know early early 2019 have seemed almost those earnings

7:49double and those are like the stats we'd like to share with people to say like you know if you would have bought this item a year ago it could have paid for itself by now which is crazy to think and so it's it's that incentive so it's like why would you get cash back when you could get Bitcoin back as well and I think that's the kind of mindset and kind of just change and thinking

8:11that we're trying to put out there that's great and you know looking forward I hope that trend continues as well and so with lolly looking forward are you looking at releasing more functions into the product or are there something is there something else that users are looking look forward to or is it more partnerships more brands yeah so we're actually very excited we're going

8:36to be launching our mobile app later this summer so it's something to stay tuned for and we're going to you'll hear all about that on our Twitter channel at try lolly first so definitely follow us on there if you're not following us and that'll be really exciting and people will be able to earn Bitcoin back the palm of their hands over it we're excited about that and then you know

8:57onwards towards sanity you were actually going to be in your neck of the woods expanding into Canada I will be our first country very cool I like international expansion and so as you continue to grow as well there may be challenges and obstacles that lolly may have to overcome you know what do you foresee as some of the largest obstacles that may you need to get over

9:19to continue the growth of the platform I think it's using people's fears about getting involved honestly I think people were very scared about Bitcoin in 2017 and they see it as volatile and we got to be honest with people Bitcoin is volatile you're not putting your own money into lollies you're not investing with your own money you're just chopping

9:44as you normally would so there's we've taken the risk out of the equation for people and I think that kind of calms their fears a bit and so there's you know there's really like no loss like there's only like if Bitcoin is successful you could be pretty wealthy one day you know and if it all kept it up so I think there's all just just an education part of it you know

10:06education and educating people about the technology use cases for it as the cornices for value I think that's part of Wally's job is to educate people on top of the providing it to that we can't just hand out if I'm we need to tell them why it's important in mines yeah it's it's really interesting how you know they're there's those external forces of you know how much does the

10:29public know about Bitcoin and how much is that going to affect the success of the company so are their education initiatives or learning initiatives or just putting the word out there from lolly to explain not just about the platform but just about you know the general benefits of owning these virtual currencies on behalf of lolly we are really trying to put out a lot of

10:54educational materials on our blog so if you could have blog.com you can learn quite a bit about Bitcoin and its beginnings it's technology pretty much anything you would want to know on top of that we're actually partnered with a lot of educational platforms you could take a course on blockchain and Bitcoin on Coursera and earn Bitcoin for learning about Bitcoin which i think is

11:16pretty great so and yeah we're we are always promoting education we encourage our users to read the Bitcoin standard to get involved and we you know pump this out and in our marketing emails and a lot of other platforms so education we want people that have be educated about Bitcoin I think then they can tell their friends it's a word-of-mouth thing we're

11:39trying to spread the good about that coin yeah well that's great and Bitcoin standard is a great book as well so I'm glad you're preaching the education aspect of it and education is key so how can the viewers learn more about lolly get started and get involved with a community yeah so lolly is very simple I would say it is the easiest way to own

12:04Bitcoin that's currently available on the market so you just want to go to lolly com sign up make an account you can download the browser extension on edge Firefox or Chrome and then basically go to our stores page start browsing a thousand plus brands and then yeah pick pick something you like and check out and spin about Bitcoin your wallet it's pretty simple if you want to

12:28follow us on our social handles we're at try lolly at lolly on Instagram and I think that's I think that's what we're going on tik-tok soon so stay tuned for some some more lolly content very cool well thank you so much Aubree I will leave those links in the description box below for the viewers that's all the time that we have for the interview but

12:49I really appreciate you coming on and talking about lolly and about Bitcoin and all the best moving forward with lolly and let's follow up in the near future thank you so much Ashton