Azteco and Second Generation Bitcoin wallet Pine are working together to bring the new service category “Consumer Bitcoin” to the public. Combining Pine’s best in class, “Apple Grade” user experience with Azteco’s frictionless delivery creates a compelling offering to Bitcoin newcomers.
“Second Generation” or “Consumer Bitcoin” wallets are here, and one of the first and best is Pine, a new wallet developed by Timothy Engqvist Johansson.
A Little History…
Encryption in chat was brought to over 300,000,000 daily users through WhatsApp. Before that, the billions of messages sent by the vast majority of chat apps were easy to read in transit and not private.
There were a few previous attempts to encrypt chat through apps that worked as privacy tools, but it took a “Consumer Grade” messaging app to bring this essential feature to hundreds of millions of users.
The same effects will happen in Bitcoin services with, and it’s all about usability; an app or a class of “Consumer First” app will emerge that is designed to fit the needs of consumers, and that wallet and service will sweep the entire world as WhatsApp did.
What is Pine?
Pine is a Bitcoin App. Using Pine is beautifully simple. Get the app, select a username and you’re ready to start using Bitcoin.
That’s it.
Now watch how simple getting Bitcoin can be…
There’s nothing to set up. You’re up and running instantly. Painless, non-intimidating, zero configuration. And no Bitcoin addresses. This is essential for consumers, and it’s why apps like WhatsApp and others spread virally. You send messages to a contact not a number.
Imagine the following scenario. Jane is curious about Bitcoin, and on her lunch break, she buys an Azteco Voucher from Cappuccio’s to see what Bitcoin is like.
At the bottom of the voucher is an instruction to download Pine. Pine is ready in less than a minute. She points Pine at the QR on the voucher. It redeems instantly to her Pine wallet.
That’s all there is to it.
Before taking a third bite of her toasted Panini, she has been converted into a Bitcoiner. Now that she is on-boarded with a small amount of Bitcoin, she can explore other aspects of Pine and Bitcoin. If she decides to, she can go through the procedure of writing down her Mnemonic in a quiet moment at home, and not in the street.
Pine redeems Azteco vouchers without requiring the user to interact. It just works, just like Apple’s ground breaking UX and applications get out of your way so you can do your work, or in the case of Pine and Azteco, use Bitcoin.
Pine moves processes into logical positions in the on-boarding workflow so people can get things done. This is Consumer Centric Design, and it’s the way the vast majority of people using Bitcoin will experience it.
The other aspects of Pine’s design are also Consumer Centric:
Payments appear the same way that instant message history timelines do; each contact has it’s own “chat log” only the chats are money. This is instantly familiar and also a fitting metaphor for Bitcoin, which is a messaging service like Messenger and WhatsApp, but with an important twist; the messages can be used as money.
The vast majority of people experience hard fought for and well engineered security in messaging apps as invisible layers. The instant on-boarding, seamless user experience and zero friction activation in Consumer Bitcoin apps will build on that work to preserve your privacy whilst keeping everything light, easy to use and trivial to understand.
Spreading Pine, One Voucher at a Time
At the bottom of each voucher Azteco issues, there is a call to action to users to install Pine. As Azteco spreads Bitcoin throughout the global market via its vouchers, it will also spread Pine, which in turn will spread Bitcoin through it’s viral address book leverage. This in turn will create greater demand for Azteco Vouchers, as they are the easiest way to get Bitcoin into Pine.
As Azteco spreads, our vouchers will be redeemed in different contexts and gateways, pushing the Bitcoin exactly where users want it to go. The most important part of this is the user; designing for the user, and helping the user. Without users, the entire ecosystem is constrained.
The market will be layered with many applications serving different functions; there will be a rich choice of tools to suit every need, filling every niche, nook and cranny so that all users are satisfied.
Just as Azteco serves its function in the market by doing what it does, wallets like Pine serve their function in the market, and the market decides what takes off and spreads everywhere.
Without Bitcoin getting into the hands of users however, the Bitcoin can’t flow, and as it is the life’s blood of the economy, it must flow, for “The Transformation” to take place.
We at Azteco are very exited to be working alongside Pine in the new category of Consumer Bitcoin, applying decades of proven techniques and thinking to this transformative new tool. And this is just the beginning.
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