
Beenz, a digital currency before Bitcoin - prostoalex
https://thehustle.co/beenz-pre-bitcoin-digital-currency
======
petecooper
Ah, Beenz. I remember these, been a while since I've seen them mentioned.
Anecdata disclaimer.

My then-wife spent a huge amount of time -- certainly 100+ hours minimum --
completing surveys, reviews and the like, got paid in Beenz, then we exchanged
them for high street store vouchers and bought a vacuum cleaner which lasted
far less than 100 hours and the store we got it from went out of business. It
was a wild ride.

------
ariehkovler
Ah, the heady days of the first Dot Com bubble. I remember it well.

This was a period when one of the biggest drags on the development of
e-commerce and monatizing Internet businesses was the absence of a good micro-
payment solution. PayPal hadn't really taken off yet, App Stores weren't a
thing, and everyone was scrabbling around for a way to enable cost-effective
small payments that didn't have prohibitive transaction fees. Plus the
advertising infrastructure that Google enables didn't exist, so micropayments
for doing things online made a sort of sense.

Beenz was one option for this that I vaguely remember. I think I had an
account, though I never spent any Beenz on anything. e-Gold was another
popular option.

I'm not sure the analogy with Bitcoin and crypto really holds. Beenz was
trying to solve a particular problem, and became obsolete when that problem
was solved more elegantly by PayPal, Amazon and the credit card vendors.
Bitcoin is trying to solve the 'problem' of state-backed inflationary fiat
currencies. It might fail in its own terms but fiat currencies aren't changing
in response to it.

That said, clearly most of the crypocurrencies and ICOs out there are
somewhere between follies and scams. Almost all will fail, but they'll fail
because they're largely dumb and they suck and they aren't solving a problem
at all.

~~~
Theodores
After reading the article I learned that Beenz had a bit more capitalist greed
to it than I thought at the time. It was never quite there yet, always chicken
and egg. I was notionally in favour of it but I was not an early adopter.
Coverage in the press was generous but it did not seem they had fallen for the
hype, there was something genuine about it. We also did not realise
micropayments were not going to solve everything, eventually 'free' ads to
stalk you everywhere became the 'solution'.

If it was brought back today I would endorse it a lot more than those silly
ponzi-coins that people get so excited about.

I say ponzi-coins pejoratively for everything cryptocurrency related, and I do
think that there does need to be some campaigning against them. A little bit
of idle speculation here and there by people wanting to get rich with a bit of
play money does encourage those people that skim off from the rest of society
with their ponzi-coin scheming.

Trade makes the world happen and makes us human rather than Neanderthals, they
died out because they did not trade. Beenz may have had get rich quick dreams
but the ethos was there, to enable publishers to get money for articles and
for people to buy/sell stuff.

The problem I am having with ponzi-coins is that there is none of that, not
even a veneer of wanting to make the world a better place. An army of people
now exist that just have nothing better to do than to make everyone else bag
holders of their blockchain bamboozle voodoo and I think they need to have
their oxygen supply cut off. Ponzi coins have done nothing for the public
good. Does this make Visa/Mastercard and the banks 'better'? Nope, but just
like Beenz was not the right solution neither are these ponzi coins.

~~~
ariehkovler
> The problem I am having with ponzi-coins is that there is none of that, not
> even a veneer of wanting to make the world a better place.

My experience with the Bitcoin community goes back to 2012-3, when they were
very much Libertarian Utopians trying to make the world a better place (at
least their concept of a better place!). Those people still exist, though
they've been drowned out a bit by the "Lambo" goldrush types.

Of course, the VAST majority of scamcoins are just about getting rich and have
no idealists at all, just the conmen and the conned.

------
laurent123456
At about that time I remember collecting all kind of internet points from
websites. In France, Maximiles points were much more frequent than Beenz and
since many company wanted to get in, they were giving away quite a lot of
points, which could be exchanged for DVDs, videogames, books, etc. It didn't
last long but it was great to get a lot of free stuff.

I'm surprised to see Maximiles apparently survived the dotcom bubble [0] -
it's still possible to collect and exchange points, though I imagine at a much
smaller scale than before.

[0] [https://www.maximiles.com/](https://www.maximiles.com/)

------
mihaifm
No details about the tech behind it, I would like to read their white paper :)

~~~
Luc
It was an Oracle database.

~~~
olivermarks
[https://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/09/16/ellison_spills_over...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/09/16/ellison_spills_over_beenz/)
It was an attempt to leverage a centralized Oracle database as a transaction
engine, hence Ellison getting behind it in '99\. Bears no relation to crypto
currencies whatsoever

------
Legogris
I was just thinking about this the other day. I remember being around 12 and
doing what I could do score free points. Felt incredible accomplishment when I
managed to get "free" battery adapters and other trinkets.

I also agree that it is nonsensical to compare Beenz (which are more
comparable to points you get in online panels) to modern-day cryptocurrencies.

------
arisAlexis
can someone explain what this has to do with a decentralised currency such as
Bitcoin? The title is almost clickbait. Also the part that says block.one ICO
raised money without telling the investors is flat out wrong. Almost as if
these articles have a hidden agenda or total lack of understanding the tech.

------
GreenPlastic
I remember tons of free Beenz/flooz and trading them for Wendy’s, Burger King
and subway gift certs - ate free for like an entire summer.

------
tCfD
Around the same time there was also Flooz, famously promoted on national TV by
Whoopi Goldberg, backed by proof of celebrity endorsement

------
api
This was just a centralized database so it has little in common with Bitcoin.

~~~
mynameisvlad
Well, you know, other than the whole "digital currency trying to
disrupt/supplant fiat" thing.

------
JulianMorrison
I had a plushie one of those from when the office closed down! Long since lost
of course.

