We built the Blockchain Wallet because we’re driven by a relentless passion for making crypto easy to use. We want everyone to be able to use it, not just invest in it.
We believe that owning and controlling your own private key is the single most important aspect of using crypto. Without a private key, you aren’t using crypto – you’re just speculating and you’re missing the defining part of crypto: user controlled, sovereign money.
It was enabling that exact need that underpinned the development of the Blockchain Wallet six years ago. The mission? Make it easy for every user to have their own private key, to get users away from storing funds at exchanges and “bitcoin banks”, and to enable everyone to be their own bank.
Fast forward six years and we’ve achieved a few things that we’re proud of:
Building the first cross-platform, non-custodial, and cross-chain wallet
Signing up 30 million wallets in 140 countries globally
Powering over $200 billion in consumer transaction volume and over 80 million consumer crypto transactions in the last two years alone
Championing the cause of financial sovereignty and user-control with regulators around the world. (We’ve spent thousands of hours and millions on education and outreach.)
Helping our users store millions of BTC, BCH & ETH coins and generate over a quarter of bitcoin network traffic alone
Most importantly, it’s been a honor and privilege to be the first place tens of millions of people turn in order to actually use crypto and hold their own keys.
But there’s a lot still to do.
At the end of the last bull run, we did a serious self-assessment and asked ourselves, what do users need that we aren’t delivering today? We identified four common requests and frustrations:
Better, faster ways for new users to get their first crypto and make their first transaction
More storage types, like hardware, as users’ balances increased
More assets as users want to store and use an increasingly diverse asset set
Better, more reliable sources of liquidity as trading and investing across assets continues to increase
Satisfying these demands meant building a huge extension of our platform, at scale. We’ve had our heads down much of this year doing exactly that and starting today we’re excited to begin delivering new solutions to you, beginning with two new capabilities.
First, we’re launching Swap by Blockchain: a next generation trading product with best-in-class liquidity and execution, powered by our new machine trading software platform that ensures best execution across assets. Blockchain Wallet users will now have access to exchange-like prices without giving up control of their keys or their crypto. And trade limits will increase from hundreds to thousands of dollars of crypto per trade.
While the system currently has deep liquidity drawn from a variety of sources, we plan to add more liquidity sources over time, including decentralized exchange protocols. We’ve rebuilt our risk and KYC systems, so that you can onboard with ease, in minutes. Swap ensures our users stay liquid and can trade at the best prices in the market, regardless of overall market volatility and challenges. We’ve started rolling Swap out today and everyone will have access over the next two weeks.
Secondly, we’re launching Lockbox: a hardware vault in your pocket, built in partnership with hardware leader Ledger. Lockbox is simple to use and is even more secure thanks to a locked endpoint that prevents phishing and spoofing attacks. It’s hardware made easy, with a setup that takes just a few moments thanks to our custom hardware-software integration.
With Lockbox you’re able to check your balance and receive transactions, on mobile and web, without the inconvenience of having to plug your device in every time. In an industry first, you’ll also be able to trade directly from your Lockbox while still maintaining your keys. In conjunction with Lockbox, we’re also excited to let current Ledger device owners seamlessly pair with the Blockchain Wallet and trade directly from the Ledger device they already own.
And we have more coming this year, including additional assets and new products within the Blockchain Wallet that will bring you new, faster, and better ways to get started in crypto.
We’re here to build a new financial system and the Blockchain Wallet is your passport to that new world. Store crypto, trade crypto, transact with crypto and most importantly truly own and control your crypto.
We’re dedicated to building the functionality you want, without compromising your control of your key. Your crypto is yours, and it should stay that way.
Visa chief executive officer Alfred Kelly has said that cryptocurrencies are not a significant threat to his company’s electronic payments hegemony. He nevertheless indicated that the legacy financial intermediary may move into handling cryptocurrency if there is an incentive to do so.
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Kelly: Cryptocurrency More a Commodity Than Payment Instrument
to CNBC Mad Money’s Jam Cramer on Oct. 25, Kelly said cryptocurrency is more of a commodity than a payment instrument as it stands. But, in the event that the technology gains traction as a payment system and becomes more like a fiat currency, Visa is willing to claim its stake.
Alfred Kelly
“We want to be in the middle … of every payment flow in the world regardless of how it happens or what the currency is behind it. So if we have to go there, we will go there. But right now, it’s more of a commodity than a payment vehicle,” Kelly said.
The interview was given short shrift by cryptocurrency enthusiasts, sceptical of legacy financial institutions eyeing rewards from an industry they have always resented. To proponents of decentralized currencies, it is untenable that corporations such as Visa should be willing to scuttle the foundational ideas of censorship-resistant cryptocurrency just to get their share.
bitcoin was created to challenge the conventional financial system and return the ownership of money to the people, whereas Visa and Mastercard, essentially the traditional banks of the internet, uphold the status quo and support institutional alliances while earning billions of dollars from punitive fees.
Credit and debit card providers generally fees that can rise to as much as 3.5 percent of every transaction. That compares with transaction fees of less than $0.10 for most cryptocurrencies, regardless of the amount transacted.
Financial Giants Should Not Bring Institutional Baggage to the Cryptosphere
Kelly’s indication that his company will move in if cryptocurrency becomes more of a fiat currency implies technological appropriation rather than a progressive vision. By pitching up middlemen in blockchain, the legacy institutions may bloat the cryptocurrency world with unnecessary costs and undermine the original vision of financial freedom and inclusion.
Visa’s rival Mastercard has been more proactive in its involvement with the technology. The U.S. company recently acquired promises to allegedly reduce the confirmation time for cryptocurrency transactions from the usual ten minutes to nanoseconds through a mechanism that utilizes existing systems for fiat currencies. Such a mechanism is certain to be highly centralized and permissioned however, should it ever see the light of day. Mastercard is also supposedly looking to address security concerns by setting up refund services for cryptocurrency transactions.
In spite of his company’s complicity in identical crimes, Mastercard CEO Ajaypal Singh Banga has criticized cryptocurrency for supposedly attracting criminals such as terrorists and money launderers. Like traditional banks, Mastercard and Visa have not shied away from handling money as an instrument of political control and from an overt ideological position. The case of Wikileaks founding editor Julian Assange, who began soliciting donations in bitcoin after his Mastercard and Visa accounts had been , comes to mind.
Instead of weaponizing money as an ideological prefect, politically agnostic cryptographic technologies facilitate financial freedom. It is vital that the financial giants such as Visa and Mastercard do not bring their institutional baggage to the blockchain, arriving late to shore up their profits and add further layers. As one bitcoiner in response to Alfred Kelly’s comments, “Sorry Visa, we’re deprecating the middle.”
What do you think about the comments of Visa’s CEO? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock.
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