Welcome2Bitcoin Project Pitch
Link to project demo https://youtu.be/ePRFqPP7-Kg
The project (still in beta) can be found here https://satsignal.herokuapp.com/
TL;DR
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Welcome2Bitcoin is akin to a venus-flytrap for no-coiners. No coiners don’t give a shit about bitcoin; that’s why they’re no coiners…but chances are they do enjoy the pleasures of the flesh. Welcome2Bitcoin grants all of us bitcoiners the ability to lure no-coiners in with promises of free coffee and free ice cream, and before they know it…SHAZAM, they’ve used lightning and have self custodied KYC-free sats via LNURLw and are now berating innocent bystanders about the evils of central banking.... In more concrete terms, it's a pre-loaded lightning wallet in the web. All a no-coiner needs to do is scan and pay, no app download required, no kyc, no funding a wallet, just raw-dog real world bitcoin commerce in as few steps as possible.
Pitch
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Bitcoin is awesome…but sadly most people don’t know it! In fact very few do (sad face). This lack of understanding is perhaps the biggest hurdle standing in the way of the bright orange future we all envision. Us bitcoiners are trying to fix this problem by “orange-pilling” more people. If you believe, like me, that ensuring bitcoin’s success, as quickly and as thoroughly as possible, is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING, then it stands to reason that building orange-pilling tools is a worthy endeavor.
Orange-pilling people however can be very difficult because explaining bitcoin is very difficult.
Showing is easier than telling so I’ve built a tool that I’m calling “Welcome2Bitcoin” which seeks to make “showing” bitcoin to people AS EASY AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE. This is accomplished by embedding bitcoin, Trojan Horse style, into things they already want… like coffee or ice cream. Welcome2Bitcoin enables no-coienrs to buy stuff with bitcoin without needing to download an app or know what bitcoin is or how it works. Welcome2Bitcoin’s success rests on the following premises:
1.) People like free stuff
2.) Stores want to sell stuff (also there exist stores that accept bitcoin for payment see BTCmap.org)
3.) Bitcoiners want to orange-pill other people (friends, family, randos ect.)
4.) Bitcoin companies will spend money to acquire new users
Enough of the pre-amble what is it?!?
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Welcome2Bitcoin is a web based lightning wallet that bitcoiners can pre-load with sats and gift to their friends to enable them to make their first real-world purchase with bitcoin. At the end of the process they can email themselves educational material and are prompted to withdraw the remaining sats via LNURLw. It also provides several hooks into the Bitcoin twitter community in the hopes of further accelerating the unsuspecting no-coiner's fall down the rabbit hole.
How does it work?
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Bitcoiners “buy” a pre-loaded wallet which really is just a unique URL on my website. This unique link entitles the owner to pay any lighting invoice that is less than the amount of sats deposited into the wallet. The unique link can be thought of as a private key which they can text to a friend (or print out and give as a QR code). All the no-coiner has to do is walk into a store that accepts bitcoin, order something, ask to pay in bitcoin, then click on the link on their phone.
The link will bring them to a web page which will open their camera and prompt them to scan the lightning invoice for the item they just ordered. As long as the invoice is less than the amount pre-loaded onto the wallet, the no-coiner will be able to click “Pay with bitcoin”. In the background, my node will pay the invoice for them… MAGIC! After this purchase there will likely still be sats remaining in the wallet, in which case the user will be presented with an LNURLw QR in order to take possession of the left over sats and become a true bitcoiner by self custodying their very own KYC-free sats. The user also is able to enter their email address to have more thorough instructions and educational materials sent to them. The nice thing from the bitcoiner's perspective who bought this pre-loaded wallet, is that they can always take the sats back if the no-coiner doesn't use them since they also have the URL.
More details
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When a bitcoiner goes to buy a wallet, they can optionally choose to buy a wallet for a participating store in order to let the store-front distribute the orange-pill to their customers. The bitcoiner can also decide to include their twitter handle in order to be thanked after the wallet is used. One more feature is the ability for the no-coiner to post their invoice to twitter (instead of immediately paying it with the sats in their web wallet). If they post the invoice to twitter, my twitter bot will retweet it to see if anyone in the Bitcoin twitter community wants to pick up the tab. If someone does, then the no-coiner could keep the whole wallet balance as their own KYC-free sats. If no-one pays it after 30 seconds, then my node will pay the invoice. I hope to initiate a movement similar to the StackChain but called GiveChain which will record and incentivize the generous bitcoiners who welcome no-coiners to bitcoin in this fashion. If this gains momentum bitcoin companies may want to utilize the platform to incentivize bitcoiners to orangepill more people and onboard them onto their platforms with custom referral codes. This could be accomplished by utilizing referral codes and re-imbursing bitcoiners whose orange-pilling efforts translate into new users.
Roadmap
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I'm going to refactor the code to use LNBits so that it’s completely non-custodial. When the bitcoiner buys a wallet it will spin up a new lnbits wallet for them (I still need to figure out how to ensure that the wallet's apikeys stay fully client side so my service never has access to them)
Build out the “GiveChain” dashboard to gamify the whole process.
Finish the twitter webhook integration so that my bot tweets out whenever a wallet has been used and acknowledges the bitcoiner who gifted it.
After consulting with some legal counsel, officially launch the project using the domain bitcoinmagic.money.
Open source it.
Run some pilot partnerships with stores and bitcoin companies who want to use Welcome2Bitcoin for user acquisition.
Write a bot for each of the other major social media platforms, and cross post to twitter to further gamify the experience.
Who else worked on this?
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Michael Adebambo (MIkeOxygen) is working on the GiveChain dashboard feature and some UI/UX improvements