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.
BTC is poised to make its Ethereum debut. An initiative involving several decentralized exchanges (DEXs) as well as crypto-custodians Bitgo will introduce ”BTC-backed” WBTC, with the W standing for “wrapped.” When WBTC launches in January 2019, it will enable ethereum-based ”bitcoin” to be traded on DEXs, boosting liquidity and opening the Ethereum ecosystem to a wider audience.
Also read:
bitcoin Represented as an ERC20 Token
Blockchains such as bitcoin and Ethereum have always operated independently. While interoperability protocols have been under development for some time, achieving full compatibility between networks whose code is alien to one another is a complex task. The development of wrapped bitcoin does not mean that full synergy between bitcoin and ethereum has been attained. What it does mean is that BTC users can transact on ERC20 platforms using a native token that represents the bitcoin they’re accustomed to.
As explains: “WBTC standardizes bitcoin to the ERC20 format, creating smart contracts for bitcoin. This makes it easier to write smart contracts that integrate bitcoin transfers … The Ethereum network processes transactions faster than the bitcoin network, but bitcoin holders don’t have to wait anymore. With WBTC, moving bitcoin between exchanges is much faster.”
The initiative has attracted a host of major players from the worlds of bitcoin and Ethereum. Led by Kyber, Republic Protocol and Bitgo, WBTC will launch with the aid of partners that include Airswap, Ddex, Hydrogen, Set Protocol, Compound, Maker, Dharma, Prycto, IDEX, Gnosis, Radar Relay and Blockfolio. The concept of wrapping a cryptocurrency to create an asset that is to all intents and purposes identical has already been trialled by the likes of 0x and Maker. The former’s Radar Relay and the latter’s DAI stablecoin both make use of WETH – wrapped ETH.
More Convenience, Less Privacy
Within the cryptoconomy, the only decentralized exchanges with any sort of meaningful volume all operate on the Ethereum network. IDEX, which is supporting WBTC, is the largest DEX by a wide margin. Should wrapped bitcoin prove successful, the exchange and others like it can expect a significant influx of liquidity as bitcoin-holders enjoy the convenience of WBTC over the laboriousness of needing to trade BTC for ETH before they can participate. That convenience comes at a price however. As explains:
To receive WBTC, a user requests tokens from a merchant. The merchant then performs the required KYC/AML procedures and verifies the user’s identity. Once this is completed, the user and merchant execute their swap, with bitcoin from the user transferring to the merchant, and WBTC from the merchant transferring to the user.
The prospect of requiring KYC to obtain an ERC20 token to trade on a decentralized exchange will be anathema to the many individuals inclined to use such a platform. It is unclear whether there will be any other means to obtain WBTC without being forced to undergo KYC. The potential use cases for wrapped bitcoin are include enabling dapps to accept bitcoin payments “for lending protocols, funds, prediction markets and token sales.” The benefits offered by ethereum-compatible bitcoin are manifold. The drawbacks, however, may be too much for the privacy-conscious to countenance.
Would you use WBTC? Let us know in the comments section below.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock and wbtc.network.
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