MIAMI, FLORIDA – JUNE 04: Jack Dorsey creator, co-founder, and Chairman of Twitter and co-founder & … [+]
Bitcoin Pizza Day is celebrated on May 22nd each year to commemorate the first time that bitcoin was used to purchase a physical good or service. On this day in 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 bitcoin for two large pizzas valued at $41. That same amount of bitcoin would be worth nearly $300 million at the time of this writing.
Bitcoin Pizza Day is a reminder of the early days of bitcoin, when it was still a relatively unknown and experimental currency. It is also a testament to the growth and adoption of bitcoin over the past decade. Today, bitcoin is accepted by millions of merchants around the world.
The contrast between the growth of bitcoin centric companies and the SEC’s recent pursuit of crypto unregistered securities highlights the ongoing tension between the cryptocurrency industry and regulators. Despite this tension, there are a number of bitcoin centric companies that are building successful businesses without the sale of proprietary crypto tokens. The following four founders are doing just that.
Fold
Will Reeves is the CEO and co-founder of Fold, a debit card company that rewards customers with bitcoin on their spending. Reeves ran a nonprofit from 2006 to 2012 that gave aid to migrant workers in the Sonoma Valley. He discovered bitcoin when a group from Berkeley came to teach them how to use bitcoin for remittances.
“[Bitcoin] is a monetary unit that cannot be debased or censored and is accessible to everyone. None of that can be said about fiat currencies or other crypto currencies,” Reeves told me in our interview, explaining Fold’s bitcoin only focus.
Since nearly all Americans participate in loyalty programs, Reeve said that bitcoin as a rewards mechanism was one of the best tools to onboard people. Fold’s goal to get bitcoin into the hands of as many people as possible appears to be going well. “Over half a million people have earned with us and we’ve processed over $1 billion in value on Fold,” Reeves told me.
In a recent press release, Fold announced that they are expanding their operations into El Salvador, which will serve as its base for operations in Latin America. The move comes as part of Fold’s ongoing commitment to making bitcoin as easy and accessible as possible for everyone around the world.
Amboss
Jesse Shrader is Co-Founder and CEO of Amboss, a managed bitcoin lightning network solution that uses machine learning to optimize transactions and fees. Shrader found bitcoin after working on class action lawsuit settlements centered around bank overdraft fees. He saw bitcoin as an alternative to banking policies that weren’t customer friendly.
The lightning network allows users to send and receive bitcoin in a peer-to-peer fashion, instantly and with very low fees. “After I paid extremely high transaction fees while buying Christmas gifts in 2017, I realized bitcoin needed a scaling solution and lightning was that solution,” Shrader explained in our interview about his focus for the company.
Shrader described Amboss as a mapping service for the lightning network, similar to Waze or other navigation applications. According to Amboss data, the lightning network is over ten times faster and cheaper than traditional card payment networks. The company takes this a step further by identifying optimal payment routes for merchants and consumers alike.
They also operate Magma, a marketplace for buying and selling the bitcoin payment channels that make the lightning network function. Magma enables users to earn bitcoin yield from savings without relinquishing custody to a third party. Amboss announced last month that they completed a seed funding round that raised $4 million.
Orange Pill App
Matteo Pellegrini is the founder of Orange Pill App, a members-only social network for bitcoiners that emphasizes in-person connections. He has been involved in technology startups since the age of 19 and fell down the proverbial Bitcoin rabbit hole in 2018.
“I always thought bitcoin was much more than just a technology or a financial instrument, [it’s] an ideological movement,” Pellegrini told me in our interview. This framing drove him to create OPA in order to create a social layer on top of bitcoin.
OPA is intended to facilitate in person connections, exchange of ideas, and collaboration among bitcoiners. “When we venture into a new phase of life, from a career change to starting a family, being part of the right community can make all the difference,” Pellegrini said about his motivations for OPA.
OPA allows users to pay for their memberships with bitcoin. As a member myself, I can attest to the power of OPA. I have arranged several of my interviews through the app, including two of the interviews in this article.
Fountain
Oscar Merry was introduced to bitcoin and understood it from a monetary perspective relatively early but says he didn’t expect to ever work in the space. After the introduction of bitcoin’s lightning network however, everything changed for him. Merry is merging the lightning network with podcasting after being inspired by Adam Curry and Dave Jones’s Podcasting 2.0 framework.
“Thanks to micropayments enabled by the Lightning Network, Fountain can capture a value signal on every interaction that happens in the app,” Merry told me in our interview. Listeners and creators alike can now leverage Fountain to earn bitcoin for their time, incentivizing end user value rather than attention algorithms or advertising models. Because of the lightning network, all of this can be done without the need for intermediaries.
“We can send the money to the content creator no matter what platform they are hosted on and use the value signal to provide better discovery to other users,” Merry said about the power of Fountain and the lightning network. Since bitcoin and lightning are open protocols, developers are able to leverage those networks and build different applications on top of them. The open-source structure allows these applications to interact with each other in ways that have not been previously possible.
The companies and founders mentioned in this article are just a few examples of the many people who are working to make bitcoin more accessible and useful. These companies are helping to build a future where bitcoin is seen as a currency for everyday transactions. As the bitcoin ecosystem continues to grow and evolve, it is likely that we will see even more innovative and exciting applications for this technology. As the protocols strengthen and begin to replace intermediaries and companies alike, these founders remain optimistic that bitcoin’s story has only just begun.
