Luke Rohenaz: How TonicPow can compete with the tech giants

CoinGeek Conversations

Imagine signing up for a website, start sharing links and, voila, you’re earning money! That’s just one of the scenarios that could happen when you create an account with TonicPow and start participating.

On this week’s episode of Coingeek conversations, Charles Miller talks to TonicPow Founder and CEO, Luke Rohenaz about his startup and its potential to go after the tech giants.

TonicPow allows its users to earn Bitcoin, advertise a business or do both. You can sign-up and choose to be a promoter and/or an advertiser. How? Well, a promoter can copy one of the display ads, share the link and instantly get rewarded in Bitcoin SV. Whereas an advertiser can display an ad for promoters to pick up by simply creating a campaign.

Luke and his partners first presented TonicPow at the 2019 Coingeek Conference in Toronto where they won second place in the first Bitcoin Association BSV Hackathon.

Since its inception, the site has gone through many phases, Luke says. What started as a peer-to-peer advertising solution, now includes a pay-per-click model where users can see results a lot quicker. The aim is to help advertisers achieve “conversions” – when users end up spending money on the product or service advertised. “What we want to do is not just be paying you for clicks, we hope that you share things, really looking out for this conversion.”

While the goal of the 2019 hackathon was to onboard people to BSV, Luke points out the challenge at the Cambrian SV Bootcamp in Bali was to increase on chain transactions, and that again changed TonicPow’s thinking: “why don’t we report every click that goes on chain, solve different problems with transparency but also the concept of these real time micropayments, which show off the real capabilities of Bitcoin SV.”

In the interview, Charles quotes what Luke has said in the past— “As it develops, TonicPow could go after tech giants with the ‘network effect’ of the shared database of the BSV blockchain.” When asked to expound on this, Luke describes the ‘network effect’ as having the ability to use shared protocols to ingest data from other services. Luke brings up the concept of ‘coopetition’ where competitors share content online through the use of agreed common protocols.

“That’s what I mean by the shared network effect, you don’t have to be the mega giant to compete with the mega giant. You just have to be a participant in a mutually beneficial coopetition scenario.”

In relation to other social networks on Bitcoin SV, Luke visualizes TonicPow as potentially evolving to an open protocol. But unlike other existing ad models that revolve around knowing about people intimately, TonicPow’s targeting strategy makes use of individual promoters who share to their audiences and followers. As Luke emphasized “they’re doing the targeting without spying.”

So, what makes TonicPow stand out from other social media marketing campaigns? It’s in the special powers of Bitcoin SV: “where we end up shining is when you start to count up the various little edges that Bitcoin gives you.. it’s a better place to build something like this.”