After launching a small Linux-based device that can mine Bitcoin and make machine-to-machine payments last year, 21 has launched a micropayments marketplace that allows people to trade digital goods using cryptocurrency.
The 21 Marketplace’s initial focus is on enabling developers to buy and sell API calls. So, if you’re building an app that needs to pull in location data for every zip code entered by a user, you can write commands to call an API to do that and pay for the service using Bitcoin all at once.
The benefit of using 21’s system over the traditional way of working with paid APIs is that you don’t need to sign up, wait for an API key or provide credit card information to use them in your projects.
According to the team behind 21, that should save you between 30 and 60 minutes per API that you need to work with.
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For sellers, this marketplace negates the need to set up a corporate bank account and gateway to receive payments.
Currently, 21’s marketplace requires you to have one of its devices to take advantage of it and there are only a handful of first-party APIs to try. However, a free cross-platform client is in the works and the company hopes to add more APIs in the near future.
If you’re rocking a 21 Bitcoin computer already, this is certainly worth a look for your next dev project.
➤ The First Micropayments Marketplace [21 on Medium]
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