{"id":10444,"date":"2024-10-04T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-04T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=10444"},"modified":"2024-10-03T23:59:29","modified_gmt":"2024-10-04T05:59:29","slug":"the-pepper-doomsday-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/04\/the-pepper-doomsday-watch\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pepper Doomsday Watch"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Introduction<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The Pepper gift card platform<\/a>, seemingly created as a conduit for moving money between venture capital bank accounts and gamers’ wallets, warrants discussion based on recent developments and crowd think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Background<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Moochoo, the company, the company behind Pepper, raised $23.05 million on December 21, 2023<\/a>. Is it auspicious that they closed on a pagan holiday? Probably not, but it’s funny. Pepper’s go-to-market strategy started shortly thereafter with effectively unlimited 10% back (in Pepper coin currency) on new accounts for the first 15 days of the account’s existence, along with bonuses for the referrer. They appeared to want new users at all costs and turned a blind eye to gaming with zero due diligence on new accounts. (Have a new device? That’s a new person, obviously. It’s not possible to have more than one, duh. Just make those charts go up and to the right!) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seven months later in July, Pepper pivoted its rewards scheme away from unlimited new account cash-back, almost certainly because at its then current burn rate, it wouldn’t survive long in the face of unlimited purchases of Walmart, Home Depot, Amazon, and other high value gift cards at ~90% of face value. Pepper replaced the new-user sign-up bonus with double base points on gift cards for the first 15 days, which wasn’t useful for bulk resale and caused volume to plummet. How do I know volume plummeted? Pepper order IDs are sequential, naturally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Now<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Pepper took a few weeks, but they’ve settled into the new normal. Now, they release “Daily Boost” merchants once, twice, or three times a day. Boosted merchants earn much more than regular, like 12x on Amazon or 20x on Columbia Sportswear. Boosted merchants have a total capacity before the boost goes away, which sometimes happens in 30 minutes for popular brands and sometimes doesn’t happen at all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Warning Lights<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

There are a few recent developments that could be taken as warning lights:<\/p>\n\n\n\n