Want to buy bitcoin w/o KYC and non custodial all in one app? BlueWallet has recently launched this feature. Igor and Nuno from the BlueWallet team join me to talk about their work and the many features available in BlueWallet.
- Creating BlueWallet
- Partnering with Hodl Hodl
- UX
- Lightning
- Custodial
- Watch only wallets and hardware wallet support
BlueWallet links:
Sponsors:
Stephan Livera links:
- Show notes and website
- Follow me on twitter @stephanlivera
- Subscribe to the podcast
- Patreon @stephanlivera
Podcast Transcript:
Stephan Livera:
Nuno and Igor, welcome to the show.
Igor:
Hey guys,
Nuno:
Hi there.
Stephan Livera:
Hey guys, so thanks for joining me today on the show I’ve been watching the progress with BlueWallet and I thought it would be great to get you guys on to chat a little bit. Do you want to just start by telling us a little bit about yourself and how you got involved with Bluewallet? So Nuno, do you want to start?
Nuno:
Yeah, I can start. So basically it started in the, in the last bull run for at least from my side. So I remember like I was in the, in my corporate job in the office and like, everyone was just buying shitcoins using Coinbase and so on. Yeah. Like I think this happened to too many people. Like I, and I just thought like, okay, if this is the best that we have at the moment, there was a lot more to be built. So yeah, I just decided to start because I’m a designer. Right. And like engineering is not my strength. So I decided, okay, let me start to learn more about why Bitcoin works this way. What are the tricky parts? What do we need to learn to design something? Yeah. Then I decided to “OK let me try to find an open source project that I can contribute to”.
Nuno:
And the story that is funny, cause like I just went through, to reddit, to r/bitcoin, going and I just posted the guys, I’m a designer many years of experience, does anyone need help? And that’s where, that’s where I found Igor or Igor found me. Actually. That’s like the short story.
Stephan Livera:
Igor, Let’s hear from you.
Igor:
Yeah, just I was browsing. Right. But then found Nuno who was looking to design something to contribute to this space. So I started BlueWallet. I think the very early beta was out in early 2018. So the reason I built it was because in that 2017 bull market there were lots of companies, lots of wallets who have failed to implement SegWit, implement batching, transaction replacement, fee bumps. And I was super unhappy with that.
Igor:
I wasn’t happy with bread wallet, which was my main wallet at the time. And I was in touch with Victor Rochan Carr, who is the creator of a trust wallet for ethereum back in the day, it was still pretty much a known wallet. So he said like, Igor, you know your stuff, why don’t you build your own wallet? And I said, Hmm, indeed. Why not? So I started to build it and I released very bad looking a beta version. It was completely blueish because I stole some free designs from the web. It was a blue background with white text. So I had to come up with a name and the obvious name was Blue wallet because everything was blue. Yeah. So released, the beta version early 2018, and I found Nuno and I said, no, no, we have an opportunity to create a cool Bitcoin wallet.
Igor:
But the only thing that we cannot change is the name because the name it’s starts, because they have to register a legal entity to publish our app. You have to name it after your apps. So Apple, for example, has a policy as if you’re in FinTech. Your company name must resemble that your main product name. So you can be blah, blah, blah, and have a BlueWallet as your main product, if you’re a FinTech. So that’s the Apple’s regulation. So we had to register a company named Blue Wallet technologies and name everything below something. That’s why we have to stick with BlueWallet name. Yeah. And since then things started getting better and better. We’ve got more users, more features, but the very first feature I aim to deliver, it was specifically a SegWit and replaced by fee, which is a tool to bump your transaction fees. So if you’re unhappy, with your transact was fees of the transaction you sent. You increase fees, gradually until the transaction gets confirmed.
Stephan Livera:
Excellent. So let’s talk a little bit about the way you set up the wallet and you get it. So obviously for listeners, this is available on Android or iPhone. And I think one thing BlueWallet, is known for is just being really simple and easy to set up. So can you just talk us through, what’s the process there in terms of setup?
Nuno:
You mean you mean just to start using it?
Stephan Livera:
Yes,
Nuno:
No. Yeah. I think one of the main goals and that’s like, what we are trying to build is to build a wallet for like for the beginner user, like someone that just started in Bitcoin who wants to get access to their own keys and wants to have a little bit security that they are like using an open source project that is following Bitcoin and is trying to get, trying to have everything up to date with the protocol and so on. So that’s kind of the main idea. So we try to make things easier and simpler like appealing and even fun. Like that’s a little bit the concept. So basically just start you just install a wallet from the app store, you click like you just start another wallet and you choose Bitcoin and that’s it like it’s a little bit different from most wallets.
Nuno:
Like usually what you see in wallets is like, you’ll see start screen and ask do you want to create a new wallet or you wants to important exist in one like BlueWallet is a bit different. Like it starts by showing you the interface right away. So you can learn it, you can feel secure about it. And then you can choose to create the wallet. Once you will see all the interface works. So yeah, I think there was a little bit of effort and thought behind what we do to try to make it simpler for the new users. That’s the main goal of BlueWallet at the moment. Like I think in the future, there are many areas that we can try to go like security, privacy, private key management, cold storage, and all that sort of thing. But at the moment it’s like like a very simple wallets that as you learn, you’re going to discover bits and more powerful features like connecting to your own node. But the idea is that you start very simple with all the power on your end, I would just give you the key and that seed, write it on a piece of paper and learn what the hell is this?
Stephan Livera:
Great. And so when you start Blue Wallet, you’ve also got the option to create the different wallets. So you have a Bitcoin one and then you’ve got a lightning side. And then you can do say a watching only side where if you want to have, say your Coldcard or et cetera. So I think that’s an interesting way to structure it as well to give the new Bitcoin or some conceptual separation of what’s going on in those different sub wallets, if you will. So I’m interested to talk a little bit about your local trader feature because I recently interviewed you might’ve heard the episode. I did an episode with Max from Hodl Hodl, and we spoke a little bit about the local trader feature. So I’d love to hear some of your perspective on that and how you integrated it into BlueWallet. So maybe Igor, do you want to tell us a little bit about why you did this and how you integrated it?
Igor:
Yeah, sure. So I met Max in Lightning Conference and I’ve been following Hodl Hodl for awhile. And I actually consider Hodl Hodl as an important infrastructure project for the whole Bitcoin eco system because Bitcoin is built to be resilient on to be against any kind of regulations or blocking or whatever. So with Hodl Hodl people can trade Bitcoin, even if it’s blocked in their country. So no one can forbid people to pay each other money. So, and this is how Hodl Hodl works and it has escrow multi-sig. So it’s non-custodial so people can try Bitcoin, even if everything is blocked in your country. So this is really important, so what you’re going to do, if Coinbase is blocked in your country, what are you going to do? If Bitcoin is forbidden in your country, you can still trade it on Hodl Hodl. And the fact that it’s non-custodial, it’s pretty good. So I said that we should probably integrate because we need to support projects like this. We need to have more users aware about this project and more users to use it to give liquidity to everyone who wants to sell, who wants to buy on Hodl Hodl. And that’s why I went to great. Yeah. And we launched it. So you can now buy Bitcoin in a non-custodial way through BlueWallet that we’re planning to release support for selling through BlueWallet as well. Yeah. This is how it is.
Stephan Livera:
That’s awesome. And so I actually I tested it out myself. I just wanted to get a feel for how it works. And obviously I recognize this is very early days. I found I was quite impressed in overall. I thought it was quite a simple flow. So essentially at least my experience walking through it, you set up the Bitcoin wallet, then you go click, buy on local trader, and then you log in with your Hodl Hodl username. So you have to have a Hodl Hodl username, and then you’ll see the offers in your area. And then you can pick those. And then there were a couple little catching points that I found they weren’t like too major, obviously I’m a more experienced Bitcoin. But for somebody maybe is a little bit newer, that might be a little bit confusing, but I think this is probably one of those things where it’s just early. Right. So for me, one thing I noticed was when you were doing the address it’s the address, the receive address is the one listed on the Hodl Hodl profile page. Whereas I got the impression that it will like pick an address out of your wallet. Does that make sense?
Igor:
Yeah. This actually, this is a planned feature so we hadn’t enough time to finish it the way we envisioned it. So the way we envisioned it and Hodl Hodl prepare came to support this so every time you do a trade, the address is going to be provided from blue wallet. So you can actually have, for example watch only wallet, that’s tracking your ColdCard and it’s watch only, you cannot spend from this watch only on BlueWallet. But every time you do a trade you’re buying Bitcoin and your address is going to be generated for your watch only you know, Bitcoins from escrow going to be released to this address. So they all land on the ColdCard. This is a planned feature. It’s not yet live. We are waiting for some changes from the Hodl Hodl API but it’s going to be delivered eventually.
Igor:
Yeah. And if you’re talking about usability and user experience, there’s only another way to trade Bitcoin the noncustodial way, which is bisq and it’s way more movements to get your bisq node working. And so at the moment called the Hodl Hodl a bit easier than this, but we’re trying we’re doing our best to, to make it easier and easier. And these are, yeah. And I can talk a bit about the multi Wallet scheme we have in BlueWallet. Yes, obviously you can have on chain wallet, so you can have watch only wallets. You can have lightning wallets on BlueWallet. I usually say that this is both a blessing and occurs for a wallet. Well, first BlueWallet started as a tool for ourselves to manage our own zoo of different keys and different schemes. And we started supporting more and more schemes like BIP84, BIP44, BIP49, legacy keys like single addresses wrapped SegWit, single addresses, native segwit, Electrum schemes and lightning. So we can have all of that in blue wallet. And it’s a pain in the ass to support all of this. But I think it’s brings value because different people migrate from different wallets and they want to bring their own keys and they will mostly work in blue wallet. So even it’s a pain in the ass to support all of these, I think it brings a lot.
Stephan Livera:
Yeah, I can imagine that would be quite a bit of work to maintain across all the different standards. Whereas if you just kind of have one thing that you do, but obviously there’s, there is that compatibility aspect there. So just on the local trader as well. So can you tell us a little bit about what the sell flow might look like? So let’s say somebody is wanting to sell from blue wallet. Would it basically be similar to the buy flow or what are some differences there?
Igor:
It would be pretty similar. Yeah. So you would, you would have to, if you’re selling, you would have to create an offer and once your offer is created, it is just sitting there waiting for someone to accept your offer. And once the offer is accepted you would have to send coins from BlueWallet to an escrow address and ask her address on Hodl Hodl. It’s a two out of three multi-sig. So one, key belongs to Blue wallet. One key belongs to Hodl Hodl, and one key balanced to buyer. So I’m those three keys. They make a escrow address. So you deposit coins to an escrow address, and then you provide payment details to the buyer like your bank details and you wait for the buyer to send a payment with Fiat. Once you get the payment, you press the button to release it from escrow. It’s a bit more steps from compared to buying Bitcoins, but I think it’s kind of similar.
Stephan Livera:
Yeah. And look, I think it’s a great feature overall, and I’d definitely love to see more development in this direction because it makes it easier for someone to just let’s say, okay, so the listeners of my show, they’re typically not the straight beginner Bitcoiner, but they’re typically someone who’s teaching their, you know, their own friends. And so this might be a good feature for you. If you want to have your friend learn how to buy Bitcoin without KYC to start with. Whereas historically that has been kind of, it’s been a little bit more difficult, whereas this is kind of all in that app, if you will. So I like that aspect of it. I think it’s should be an option that’s out there, right? Cause you’ve got KYC services and then with Hodl Hodl you’ve got non KYC. So that’s a really cool feature. And yeah, just excited to see ways to make that easier and all part of that flow. And so if we could talk a little bit about some of the different wallets, so the example you were touching on earlier around the watching only wallets for Coldcard. So can you tell us a little bit about the process?
Nuno:
Can I add something too to local trading before we move on? Because I think as you said, it’s like early days, right? And I think it’s still very underrated, but it’s a super powerful feature that more people should be looking into because let me just explain the concept better. So imagine that we have services like Hodl Hodl, and Bisq and so on that are, that are essentially like liquidy pools. And imagine this service, they start to provide open APIs for for projects like blue wallet to use. So eventually you’re gonna have enough liquidity for people to start to build, to bring liquidity for their own service, for instance, to bring liquidity for CoinJoins, to bring liquidity for PayJoins to bring liquidity for coinswaps to buy and sell freely freedom without, without KYC. Like I think this service like although these are extremely important, people should support them more.
Nuno:
And eventually, I think this is the way that we can not kill, but fight against the big companies. The Coinbases of Bitcoin and so on because this is where we, as decentralized service, we have like a strength there and we have the point to actually make something useful. We don’t have liquidity for users. Yeah. And I think this is like it’s one of the things that I’m more excited in the future to see this service grow and being used by independent projects to just bring their liquidity in and start to build stuff. Without the need of KYC and B companies to provide liquidity. So that’s something super exciting to work for too,
Stephan Livera:
For sure. For sure. And actually just while we’re on that topic of local trader and integrating in terms of things like dispute flow, I suppose the way that’s handled in the app is blue wallet sort of opens up the browser to Hodl Hodl. And while you’ve got that I guess this is all happening sort of the API, but basically it there’s like the there’s like the chat there that let’s say you’re buying, you can chat with that other with the counterparty. And I suppose also like the dispute flows and all of that will be built in inside the app. Right?
Igor:
Well, dispute flow is handled inside Hodl Hodl website. So you can either open chat inside BlueWallet, which is basically a web view of it’s opening Hodl Hodl website, or just open desktop computer launch your browser and go to Hodl Hodl. Disputes are quite rare and we didn’t build anything specifically for disputes. So you have, if you have dispute, you have to go to Hodl Hodl website.
Stephan Livera:
Also, I think the feature that Max mentioned in that, in my recent episode with him which I’d also love to discuss with you guys, is this idea of being able to buy directly into, let’s say a ColdCard. So did you want to just touch on firstly, how you would firstly import the cold card master public key into BlueWallet?
Igor:
Well, yeah, actually watch only wallets are my favorite featuring blue wallet. So if you’re not trusting your keys to a software that’s running on your phone you can even mark your wallet as a watch only we support different schemes. So we’re support BIP84, BIP44, BIP49 and several electrum formats, which are not BIP compliant with certain BIP39 compliant, as far as I remember. And you can just grab xPub from them and import them BlueWallet, and it will load everything with your balance, with your transactions and it’s watch only, you cannot spend from it. So what you can do, you can just create new addresses from this hierarchy and give addresses to whoever wants to pay you. You can give that address to Hodl Hodl and Hodl Hodl will be releasing Bitcoins to the, to those addresses yeah, with ColdCard, there are several ways to import your ColdCard. You can use SD card. So you write your, I think it’s called skeleton wallet format. If you go to the ColdCard device but you can just look at base the zPub and import the zPub in the import screen of BlueWallet and it will work. So either way it will work either through SD card with Android phone, for example, or just copy paste the zPub, it will work.
Stephan Livera:
Also is there a possibility to do QR code scan there as well?
Igor:
Well, Coldcards do not support a QR codes right? Because the display’s super small. So that’s why you have to either mess with files, either copy paste zPub or just move skeleton file to SD card other projects. I think the foundation device the new hardware wallet, which is based on ColdCard firmware. I think they’re created specifically to be Coldcard compatible in terms of firmware and to provide your code flow. So it can be completely air gapped.
Nuno:
And at the moment who we support QR codes with Cobo vault right?
Igor:
Yeah. Another kid in town, which is a CoboWallet devices. They specifically designed their device to be air gapped and with QR code flow, which makes a lot of sense to me because once I have my cold hardware wallet with Bitcoins, I really don’t want to plug it to anything. I don’t even want to insert my SD card in this. Like it’s, it feels like a risk to me. So making the flow completely air gap makes a lot of sense to me.
Stephan Livera:
Excellent. And so just with that, connector, so I’ve seen, I think there’s a demonstration video that you have in terms of doing it with iPhone. I presume you can do similar with Android as well, that you just need a, basically a connector that can take a microSD and then that’s how you basically shuttle the skeleton file over. Correct?
Igor:
Oh, you can use Dropbox or whatever cloud.
Stephan Livera:
I see. And so that’s also another interesting idea as well. So we are potentially moving into a world where there will be some users who don’t actually have a PC of their own. They might have a work laptop or a work PC, but maybe not maybe their main phone or their main device is their phone. So, or a tablet, let’s say that’s potentially another option where a person can have a hardware wallet without necessarily using a desktop or laptop PC with it. If they do the whole, you know, import watching only style.
Igor:
Absolutely.
Stephan Livera:
So in terms of I guess that user who wants to now advance up the pathway and they want to now start doing things with their own Bitcoin node can you tell us a little bit about what that process would look like? I suppose we’ve got Electrum servers and then we’ve also got LND hub and so on. So can you tell us a little bit about how to advance up that curve? Because I guess just naively, if the user just is totally new and they’re just doing this well, there is some level of, well, there’s at least a, there’s a privacy concern there because they’re not using their own server. They’re not using their own node, those elements. So could you just comment on that as well?
Igor:
Nuno?
Nuno:
Yeah. I can comment with, you can give a more technical feedback, but like, yeah, like I think we did very early the backend, like the open sourcing our backend and allowing an integration with with users own Electrum server. Like we, we did it last year, so we had less than one year as a wallets. We did that pretty early and I think it was a very good decision, like to right away, allow people to just connect their own nodes because like most of the Bitcoiners that care, they use their own nodes and they know what they are doing. Right. So that was one of the concerns that we have last year. So we did spend a lot of time trying to make that right. And it was like yeah, it was a struggle, but like at the moment, I think it’s pretty okay.
Nuno:
Like it’s not the best that it can be like still need to define, IPs to get an URL, get certificates and so on. But like, it could be better just with the QR code and so on, but we are not there. But it’s pretty simple. If you know what you are doing, you just need your Electrum IP and you can connect it. Like, if you want to access it outside of your local network, you need a VPN for instance. But like so far we are IP, it will for sure improving the future.
Igor:
There’s a cool thing that there are providers that sell nodes. That sell hardware with pre-installed Bitcoin and lightning node specifically myNodeBTC, which is, I like a lot they they provide raspberry Pi with the case and with a storage with pre installed Bitcoin, with pre-installed LND and with pre-installed LND hub. So basically you can buy this device, which is pretty cheap because it’s based on a raspberry pi and it’s already has everything you need to be to be, to have self custody and you just connect your BlueWallet and everything works and you’re in control or a hundred percent of the time.
Stephan Livera:
Gotcha. And so in terms of the, I guess the backups situation as well. Right. So I presume then for the Bitcoin side, it’s the typical write down 24 words. And then on the lightning side, what’s the backup situation. Like there is a as when I was messing around with it, it basically had an LND hub URL. And I presume that’s just for, if you’re using, you know, blue wallets LND hub, right?
Igor:
Yeah. Yeah. So LNDhub is a wrapper around LND. So basically the default one is hosted by us. So the backup stream is basically username and password. Once you’re installing your own LND hub it’s going to be a username and password, which is connected to your own node. So yeah, this is how you roll, if you’re running in custodial mode lighting.
Stephan Livera:
And so I think it might be also useful just for listeners who are not familiar with what LND hub enables. It allows a kind of account based system. So as an example, you might want to run the infrastructure. You want to be the proverbial uncle Jim for your family and friends, you might be able to, you might run one lightning node with LND hub, and then they can be users on your node. So could you just outline a little bit about how LND hub works to do that?
Igor:
Yeah, basically LNDhub is a thin wrapper around LND, which tracks users, balances, and does stuff on their behalf, like sending payments and creating invoices. Yeah. And this is, you described it pretty accurately, so that we notice this, and this is how people use it. They install it and they allow all their friends and family use it. So this means one person hosts one LND node for everyone, for all his inner circle.
Stephan Livera:
And so then it basically means that the, you know, the guy who can run LNDhub for his family and friends, he does all the channel management and just sets up the channels and all of that. And then for his family and friends, they just have a nice, easy they just use it, they just pay or receive, and they don’t really think too hard about it.
Igor:
Yeah, absolutely. So there is no channel management displayed on the front end. So when you’re using BlueWallet, you’re not seeing anything about channels. So it’s the guy who hosts LNDhub has to do all the hard work of managing liquidity.
Stephan Livera:
Alright. And in terms of more secure ways to connect back with your own node, I know there was, I think this was like one concern that was raised earlier. Maybe it was earlier in the year around to doing it in a more secure way. Did you want to just comment on that? And any advancements being made in that phase?
Igor:
Which one was that?
Stephan Livera:
I think it was in relation to SSL connecting, using your SSL to your own Electrum server.
Igor:
Yeah. Yeah. So the beta version of our Electrum integration was using plain text port, no SSL. We had to fix that and eventually fix that. So all connections through for, I dunno, for quite a long time now.
Nuno:
Yeah. I think like it’s more related on how we work and how we build things like we all the time, no matter what we do, we have people requesting for stuff, asking for things to be different. And this is just related to the way we work. I think because we work in a very iterative way with very small chunks of changes being deployed, like every, every few weeks almost. So of course we cannot build everything at the same time, but it’s just a matter of time till we get there.
Nuno:
And I think the concerns about the security and privacy were valid concerns, and we just take it as feedback, like something to improve. And in this case, was the TLS integration with Electrum that was not there. So eventually we just got the time, got the time, and the people to do it because like, in the end of the day, we’re not a big team. So we cannot do many things at the same time. And luckily we have many people contributing, so that’s a good thing. So more things are getting into production. But it’s just a matter of time, like small iterations, like every release, we put something out there and we get feedback and we improve. I think this is the best way to work and it’s the way we like to work as well.
Stephan Livera:
Excellent. And I noticed on your website now I’m not a Mac or iPad user myself, but I noticed you are working on a desktop app. So can you tell us a little bit about that and what you’re thinking to build there?
Nuno:
Yeah. Do we want to explaining, like, I think the like, just talk about what is the concept, right. So Blue Wallet is trying to be a wallet for, like the, as I said, the beginner, the newbies and desktop is a big platform for that. Like, I think mobile will be, as you said, like big in some countries, some countries don’t even have that. I mean, at a desktop. But a desktop can be very useful for many people as well, like, and especially like we are seeing people with accessibility needs asking for stuff, and usually desktop works, works better for these kinds of things. Actually it was also an experiment on our, our tech stack and because we are using react native, we give a lot of power on mobile, so we can I’m not sure if you noticed, but we have a very, very fast cadence of releasing for iOS and Android.
Nuno:
And the reason for that is that we develop once and it works for both platforms. And what we are seeing now is react native, starting to go to the desktop, starting to go to the web. And it’s still very experimental, experimental frameworks and libraries, but we managed to compile a first version to Mac, to MacOS which is great because the bitcoin called itself, like the way you create transactions, the way you signed transactions, the way you brought get transactions. It’s battle tested in production, but the way to compile the app to desktop is not yet. So that’s what we are trying to see now with the alpha release. Like, is there any problems, are there any bugs are different versions of software, seeing different problems and from there as support increases for windows and Linux and so on, we are going to keep adding more, more platforms, but this is a super nice experiment and I’m super happy that we are working with react native because it gives us a lot of power and flexibility to put and put code, fast up there.
Stephan Livera:
Curious as well, what your thoughts are around trying to synchronize across the mobile and the desktop. Because obviously if it’s connecting to the Electrum sever or whatever will have the transaction, you know, the amounts but it might not necessarily synchronize the descriptions. Is that something you would look at doing as well and having a way for your mobile to sync with your desktop app or what are you thinking there?
Igor:
Yes, we’ve had requests from users. Like some people have spent a lot of efforts to document every transaction they make. So their transactions all have meaningful description, text descriptions, text memo, so people can remember what was this about this transaction? And we had required to export, just for example, just text descriptions for their transactions, so they won’t lose them. So eventually we’ll make some kind of synchronization system maybe through your iCloud or through Dropbox or through something we don’t know yet, but this will definitely be done eventually.
Nuno:
Yeah. I think that like the first feedback we got when we released the alpha version was Hey guys I have a, like a lot of wallets in my mobile and I just want to export everything to desktop. Please make it easier. So that’s like the first improvement we’re going to do.
Stephan Livera:
Yes. Just looking through the application as well. There were some interesting things I saw. So I think this is a new one it’s got, I think you guys call this ground control. And so basically you get a notification when you’ve got an incoming transaction, so that’s a pretty cool little feature. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Igor:
Yeah. So gound control is a push notification server. It’s open sourced because everything we do is open source. So yeah, it’s exactly serves the purpose to subscribe, to change as addresses and to receive push notifications through our device. Yeah. And it was named after David Bowie’s space oddity song. So it’s a tribute to David Bowie to his memory.
Stephan Livera:
I also noticed that you are looking at LNURL, which is a one of those easy ways to scan and get an invoice or receive. So I think in this case, you’re looking at LNURL pay, correct?
Igor:
Yeah its delivered, I think were released a couple of weeks ago.
Nuno:
regarding push notifications This was one of the last releases, like push notifications and just a super cool feature to have on a, mobile just increases the experience, by a lot. So you don’t need to open the up all the time to see if you got the transaction or not. You don’t need to open the app to see if you already got a confirmation. Like, so it’s a super cool feature. I’m super happy with it. And regarding a LNURL it was a pull request. And has it been there for at least eight months, like a contribution from fiatjaf that we’re trying to get like the features in BlueWallet and in the end of the day, like an LN URL is a little small protocol that can improve the experience on lightning. So we are super open off experiment experimenting with lightning. Like lightning is still a very big experiment and like anything we try to do to learn more knowledge for everyone. Yeah, so we have we have both LN URL pay and withdraw.
Stephan Livera:
Right. And also before we went online, you mentioned a little bit around multisignature. So can you tell us your thinking around that and is that something you are trying to implement as well?
Igor:
Yeah, it’s actually, we’re planning to work on, multisignature probably in several weeks at the moment we do not support multisig. Yeah, we did some customer review, customer gathering customers feedback, users feedback, and mostly people use multisig for self custody. Multisig is supposed to be a joint custody with someone else with some other parties, but usually people use it for self custody should to increase security. And this is the way we’re going to approach it. So we’re going to keep in mind that the multisig we’re building is for increasing the security of your funds. So it should be as easy as possible to work with if you have several hardware wallets from different brands. So we’re going to focus most on compatibility. thankfully we have PSBT, that helps a lot.
Igor:
Yeah. Like super excited about like, I think multiSig at the moment, like the Holy grail of Bitcoin, right? So nowadays you, we see people like buying hardware wallets and hardware wallets became like a huge market, but in the future, we need to think about why is that your mobile phone needs to be enough somehow to secure, to secure your coins. And probably multisig will be the right way to do that. Like there are teams experimenting with things that are not documented on BIPs like seedless approach, which shamir’s secret sharing and so on. But I think multisig is the right way to do it. And we’re going to invest like the rest of the year on it. And probably I probably is going to be very cool. Like we are talking about a mobile solution that will focus on simplicity and we’re going to focus on making it easier and probably free.
Igor:
And so we have, I have big ambitions within this feature. Like the idea is to commoditize multisig for the users. So that, so our parlor which we’re gonna try to make it like awesome. Basically, that’s, the idea to bring multisig again to mobile. Like there was Copay at the time and people were using copay on mobile. But it’s not, it’s not the case anymore. Like I think, cause it’s probably Casa, caravan and so on are the solutions and Electrum of course, most users nowadays, but we want to bring open service, multisig to mobile and the best way we can that’s that’s the idea behind multi-sig.
Stephan Livera:
So I guess my follow up question on that would just be, what are the main ways you’re looking at implementing? Is that going to be using something like the Coldcard SD card or is it going to be trying to do the QR code approach with say the Kobo or potentially with passport? What are some of the ways that you’re thinking about actually achieving that with a mobile?
Nuno:
Well, we don’t know yet. Yeah. We are in research phase. It’s the kind of that people that people who need to write, but like, we are open to feedback at the moment. So we are checking all the solutions. We are trying to identify errors on the current solutions and we are trying to identify ways to improve the current solutions. So we don’t have an answer yet, but it will be more clear in the next weeks for us. So at the moment we are in research.
Stephan Livera:
And obviously I’ve got to hit the privacy topic as well. I think some listeners will definitely want to hear the answers around that. So are there any things that you’re looking at in terms of things like PayJoins or CoinJoins?
Igor:
Yes, actually at the moment I’m working on PayJoins. So we have pull requests from Luke about PayJoin. So it’s basically implemented, I just need to brush it up and we’re aiming to release it with the next release, I guess. So PayJoin is going to be there, but privacy is a very complex topic. And I don’t want to I’m not even trying to look like I’m an expert on this topic, so I don’t want to give people false hope that BlueWallet is going to be a privacy solution. So because privacy is hard to gain and it’s easy to lose. So we don’t want to give the users false sense of security. So BlueWallet is not a privacy solution at the moment, if you’re looking for privacy, look elsewhere. Yeah.
Nuno:
I think the only thing I can add to that is that we are definitely more focused on security now and to make for instance, private key management easier and things like that. Then we are looking into privacy like and I look a little bit into privacy and it’s complex. Like there’s a lot of critiques on the current proposal BIPs, most of the, the BIPs were, were rejected too. To be implemented on with concurrent lists and there were teams doing their own versions and there is no consensus surrounding the current implementations. And of course there’s a huge fight on a world that is just fun to see. But but I think I think we need to see more the decentralized solutions. And nowadays we are relying on centralized service. I think BIP47 is very interesting, but it’s not clear why there aren’t more wallets getting introducing that. So we haven’t looked into that, but when we, have the time and the bandwidth to do so we will, but we are working at least at what other people are doing closely.
Stephan Livera:
I guess the other question that a user might have is just around the sustainability of the project that they might want to know, okay, this is an open source project. What’s the way that the project will sustain itself into the future. And is there like a revenue model? Is it venture funded? Can you, can you discuss a little bit on that?
Igor:
Yeah, I think that’s interesting. Like one of the, one of the first things that I realized when we decided to build BlueWallet was that there was a lot of, not a lot, but some material online telling, okay, there is no business model for a Bitcoin wallet, especially open source Bitcoin wallet. That is exactly what we’re trying to do. Like but I think it’s a learning like at the end of the day, they were dealing with a platform that the only thing it does is handling transactions, enabling value, thinking that there is not a business model here, I think it’s insane. But, but it is concerning what we see on the street nowadays. So basically we see Bitcoin wallets starting, and eventually they go on the altcoin road path because they need to make money. Right. And that’s far from ideal. Like the last thing we want to do or we won’t do it, I probably will kill the project.
Nuno:
But it’s to find, we need to find a revenue model that is independent, that is self sovereign. That is decentralized to Bluewallet. And we have we have ideas on how to do that. This is probably something we’re going to work next year. And this will pass in the way in, in different ways. Like it will be about user experience. Like I think people will pay for the best user experience on mobile. I think people will pay for the best self sovereign solutions that they can control without being dependent on any software provider. So we’ll be working on that as well. In the end of the day, we can also like have revenue models surrounding fees, routing like third parties. We already have some, like, we have revenue from third parties on the service we have on the marketplace and on buying and selling Bitcoin with Hodl Hodl, that kind of thing.
Nuno:
But we need a stronger business model that is independent. I think that is very important and something that we probably want to focus our time next year regarding funding and in the sustainability of the project like many things to say here first is that BlueWallet. BlueWallet is funded by, a group by Bitcoin OG investors that that reach out and want to help us. So the short story is we bootstrapped the project for like one year and a half. And since since March, this year or February, probably February, we started full time. And at the moment it’s just me and Igor in the next month more contributors, we will probably pass full time and this is the way we want to work. We’ve been we want to add, provide the contributors, the people that just started contribution without anyone asking anything tobe paid for their work.
Nuno:
So we are looking on how can we, how can we provide, for instance, like, can we provide people with just bitcoin bounties for the features? Can we provide people with just rewards based on time, like a normal payment, should they just be employees? Can we, for instance, give a, the company equity to the contributors, like this is all, all different things that we are looking into because like, there’s not many examples on Bitcoin on how to do this. So we have kind of trying to figure out, which is a good thing. Like it’s good to be one of the first one doing something. More things regarding founding around the tool that we are founded by, by some investors, but some Bitcoiners and the process to do that was interesting to say the least from first, we got lucky.
Nuno:
I think like we, because like our solution went kind of viral, so there were many people trying to use it. So were approached by many investors, which, which facilitated everything at the same time, brought many, many of them. I’m not gonna tell scammers, but there were many people with bad offers. People trying to acquire the company, people trying us to get to and fail fast kind of Silicon Valley style. We refused them. We refused many offers from big companies that we didn’t like. So it was a learning process because like so imagine like what’s happened was that we were building a wallet and learning and we started to play with lightning and eventually we put lighting out there and the next day, it was going viral or world wide, we had thousands of users.
Nuno:
So it was kind of overwhelming experience. For instance, I had to quit my job and the amount of emails and contacts we’re getting was just completely insane. Right. So that was very good in a way, because we had many people that really wanted to help us. And it was bad because it brought all the bad things we did as well. So we spent like the entire last year learning. okay, how can we incorporate the Bitcoin company? Where is the best place to incorporate a Bitcoin company? Where, how can we get the bank account for a Bitcoin company, for instance, like Igor, got refused for banks in London and to get the bank account and be able to work, which is completely insane. This is 2020. And people are just being refused having a bank account because they work on Bitcoin, but that was the reality.
Nuno:
And it’s happening in February. Yeah, myself, I had to struggle a bit as well to figure it out, but like, it was like a huge learning, like if people need the help or not to set up a Bitcoin company, I can give some tips. But yeah, that’s the difficult part. I think in terms of investment, there is a lot of investment in the space, which is good, specially on the ightning side, many, many companies want to support lightning project. So that’s a very good thing, but at the same time, you also get a lot of investors that are crypto investors, that they don’t understand what Bitcoin actually is. So most of the people that reach out, like, I always have to, to answer the question, why are you guys just working with Bitcoin and not Ethereum and why do, why you don’t get?
Nuno:
And, and once that question came up, you already know that the conversation was not going anywhere. Right. If I have to explain to an investor that we are working with some money with with probably the most scarce thing ever invented, and this is the completely, it’s a breakthrough in technology, maybe you are not the right person to work with us. So that was most of the conversations. Like the reality, there is a lot of money, especially in crypto. Bitcoin is a little bit more difficult. So yeah, 2019 was a interesting year to say the least it started from quitting my job to work on BlueWallet full time and to basically create the company and get investment without leaving my room. Which was pretty cool in the end of the day. So yeah. I’m already speaking for a long time, sorry.
Stephan Livera:
Sure. Yeah, no, that’s fine. Yeah. Thank you for that explanation there around you know, the discussion of the business model for blue wallet. I think that’s pretty much the main points that I wanted to touch on, unless there’s anything else you wanted to close up with on why people should consider using BlueWallet.
Nuno:
Igor? Why should people use BlueWallets?
Igor:
That’s a good question. I don’t know.
Nuno:
I think the most important thing is like we are building the world for ourselves first.
Igor:
Like it started as a tool for ourselves. It is a tool for ourselves and sometimes we’ll build stuff because we think it’s freaking awesome. Not because someone asked us to do this and we’re like, if that, some people find that this is also pretty cool and they use it to find out is of actually to be the good actor in the space and replace bad actors. And when I say bad actors is, I mean, blockchain.com and Coinbase, if we could replace them, that would be pretty good.
Nuno:
Yeah. Like I just want to say that, like, just try it out and give us feedback. Like, it’s very important because most of the time we are alone in our own, in our own rooms, working by ourselves. And so just reach out and give feedback, like, and give the violent reactions. If you want to trash something, please do that will be super useful as well. Yeah so feel free.
Stephan Livera:
Great. Excellent. So where can listeners find you online?
Nuno:
Just find us on Twitter, like BlueWallet is BlueWallet.io and Twitter handle is @Bluewalletio I’m on Twitter @nvcoelho And that’s yeah. That’s enough Igor. You are @overtorment on Twitter.
Igor:
Yes, I am.
Stephan Livera:
Alright. Well, thank you very much for joining me.
Nuno:
Thanks for inviting us.
Igor:
Thank you so much Stephan.
Nuno:
That was a pleasure.