Creating Physical Obyte Textcoins
If you have ever been at larger events or conferences, you know how many people there are at such a venue. The problem soon becomes obvious — there’s a lot of interest, but you need a quick way to show people some of the features of Obyte. Here’s a quick guide on how to create physical card sized textcoins you can hand out to people.
The benefit of a physical textcoin is obvious. You can hand out multiple and allow people to experience for themselves, how easy many things work with Obyte and the Obyte Wallet. You can have hundreds of people install the wallet and claim the textcoin you handed out all at once, without requiring your assistance. You won’t need to ask people their email address or mobile number to send it as text messages.
The process
To benefit fully from this feature, you will need a bit of preparation. At first, it might seem like a lot of manual labour, but once you get the hang of things, it becomes fast and easy. You can create hundreds of textcoins in a single evening without breaking a sweat.
Step 1 — Design a nice template
First, you will need to design a template. I just used Google Docs for this example, but graphics editors are probably much easier to use and would make it possible to create super slick designs in no time.
Step 2 — Generate textcoins
My recommendation is to use Obyte’s GUI wallet to create the textcoins even though there are scripts to do it. Using the GUI wallet makes it easy to reclaim any unclaimed textcoins after a while. To speed up the process, you can temporarily disable the wallet’s password, so you won’t have to type it all the time.
To generate textcoins in the Obyte Wallet, simply click the Send-button at the bottom and click the “Share via message” tab. Copy the URL part of the textcoin and store it in a spreadsheet or text document.
1: Enter the amount for the textcoin in the “Amount” field.
2: Click the “Share Via Message”-tab.
3: Click the large “Share Via Message”-button.
The wallet then shows the textcoin you just generated.
Select the text in the gray area and copy the URL-part (including seed words) to a spreadsheet or text document.
Repeat this process for each physical textcoin you want to create.
Step 3 — Generate a unique QR-code
To prevent the textcoin URL from taking up too much space on the physical card, generate a QR-code. This makes it easy for users to scan it using mobile devices or laptops with cameras.
There are several online tools that can help you do this. One that lets you create a unique design that fits the rest of the textcoin design is the online tool from qrstuff.com.
Here’s a quick overview of how the page works.
Make sure to pick “Website URL” in column 1.
Enter a textcoin URL in the “Website URL”-field in column 2.
Create special styles and designs in column 3.
Click the “Download QR-code”-button and store it on your computer.
TIP: Name the files “1”, “2”, “3” etc. to make it easier to know which textcoin URL is which QR-code.
Step 4 — Insert QR-codes in each textcoin
Copy/Paste as many textcoins you need from the template you designed in step 1 and insert a unique QR-code image in each of them.
Step 5 — Print and cut it
When you have all the unique textcoins you need, simply print the document and cut out the textcoins.
Step 6 — Enjoy!
Hand out the physical textcoins to visitors at events, listeners at conferences, or even random strangers. Only your imagination sets a limit to how physical textcoins can be used. The important thing is, that you now have a way to pass on an Obyte textcoin to someone without having to know even their email address. They will benefit too, as they can simply put the card in their pocket and get back to claiming it once they feel they have time for it.
