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Firm Title: Azteco
Founders: Alexander Fernandez and Paul Ferguson
Date Based: 2014
Location of Headquarters: Santa Monica, CA
Quantity of Bitcoin in Treasury: Not disclosed
Variety of Workers: 12
Web site: https://azte.co/
Public or Personal? Personal
When Alexander “Akin” Fernandez first conceptualized Azteco over a decade in the past, he merely needed to make bitcoin simpler to acquire. He needed folks to have the ability to buy bitcoin as seamlessly as they have been in a position to purchase a present card, and so he developed a system during which folks should purchase pay as you go bitcoin vouchers for as little as $10, redeemable in a minute.
Azteco vouchers at the moment are out there in over 190 nations, purchasable on-line or with money with in-person distributors. The primary benefit to purchasing BTC through Azteco vouchers is the truth that you don’t need to disclose your id to take action, to not point out the method of shopping for a voucher is fast and straightforward. Azteco affords each on-chain and Lightning capabilities, giving customers the selection to redeem their BTC on both the Bitcoin base chain or the Lightning Community, a Layer 2 funds community constructed on prime of the Bitcoin blockchain.
In response to an estimate from Fernandez, over a million folks have already bought Azteco vouchers. However his aspirations are far past the already-impressive variety of vouchers thus bought: he has his sights set on Azteco servicing a buyer base of over 30 occasions that, as Azteco does its half in “normalizing” Bitcoin.
A transcript of our dialog, edited for size and readability, follows under.
Frank Corva: The place did the inspiration for Azteco come from?
Akin Fernandez: It got here from my very own expertise of discovering out that getting bitcoin may be very tough. I noticed it would not need to be like this. We might use a well-recognized system like a top-up voucher, which billions of individuals use to prime up their cell phones, and apply that course of to getting bitcoin. All we’ve got to do is construct a software program, put distribution in place, after which it ought to simply work. And lo and behold, it does.
Corva: Did you’ve gotten a specific buyer base in thoughts once you designed Azteco?
Fernandez: Sure, I had myself in thoughts. I needed to have the ability to get bitcoin with out having to make any type of fuss or effort to do it. I needed to have the ability to go to the grocery store, purchase $20 value of bitcoin and put it straight onto my pockets. And I am not distinctive. I might assume that there have been different individuals who have been like me who might perceive the proposition and the convenience of use and who would take to it like a duck to water.
You discover that with innovations, many occasions they arrive about as a result of persons are fixing issues for themselves, not as a method to get wealthy or for any purpose aside from to unravel their very own issues. And since persons are comparable, they remedy different folks’s issues, too.
Corva: Talking of your individual expertise. I’ve learn that you just have been unbanked for a time frame. Is that this true and will you develop on it, in that case?
Fernandez: Effectively, I turned unbanked for a purpose that I, till today, do not know. I went all the way down to “my” financial institution to money a test, they usually could not discover my account within the system. I had acquired no communication from them in writing or in any manner. Unexpectedly, I had no checking account. So, for a few years after that I did not have entry to bank cards or something that different folks within the West take with no consideration.
This taught me a really, very large lesson about how tough it’s to do something within the twenty first century if you do not have entry to banking services. You may overlook buying on-line. You may overlook any type of comfort of going right into a retailer and paying with a card. All of that goes away.
So, once I was engaged on Azteco, it was made clear to me how highly effective a device it was going to be, as a result of, with Bitcoin, you can’t be unbanked by any third celebration. You could have management over your artificial cash.
Corva: I’ve heard you utilize this time period “artificial cash” earlier than, and also you’ve mentioned how we shouldn’t confer with bitcoin as precise cash. Why is it necessary that we do that?
Fernandez: It is necessary as a result of it is true. Bitcoin is just not cash — it is a database. Can or not it’s used as cash? In fact. It may be used as very, excellent cash. It is a good simulation of cash. But it surely would not need to be cash for it to be helpful.
Additionally, in the event you name bitcoin cash, all of the laws that the state has imposed on precise cash might be superimposed or brushed over Bitcoin inappropriately, making it laborious to make use of and slower to unfold. So, it is crucial to inform the reality about Bitcoin. Bitcoin has taken so lengthy to get into each nook and cranny as a result of there’s been this misconstruing of it as cash.
WhatsApp reached a billion folks in 4 and a half years. That is the type of unfold into folks’s telephones that we would count on if the rails to get onto Bitcoin have been frictionless, similar to they’re with WhatsApp.
The truth that Bitcoin has not reached that variety of folks signifies that there is one thing mistaken in the best way persons are fascinated with it, and so it is necessary for us to consider it appropriately.
Corva: How many individuals is Azteco reaching? Put one other manner, what number of vouchers did Azteco promote in Q3 or This autumn of 2023?
Fernandez: The precise numbers I haven’t got at hand being the CEO and never the CFO. However we had our largest ever month final month. I used to be advised this yesterday. The variety of vouchers we’re promoting is growing, and it is a direct results of our growing our distribution and likewise the sentiment in the direction of Bitcoin altering on a world scale.
We are the best solution to get bitcoin. When folks uncover us, they are saying two issues: “Initially, why is not every little thing as simple as this?” and “How come I have not heard of this earlier than?”
Issues are synergizing and coming collectively to convey us to a degree the place we’re a world pressure for good and for getting Bitcoin to the individuals who want it probably the most — the unbanked and the individuals who do not have entry to monetary rails or individuals who simply do not need to be the victims of the monetary rails.
The old-fashioned crop of Bitcoin companies which were serving folks during the last 10 years all imagine that Bitcoin is cash and make it very tough to get an account. Everyone’s so inured to the thought of getting a checking account or an account of any type, whether or not it is by way of e-mail or anything. The idea instantly is, “Effectively, in fact, I’ve to have an account to be able to use this service.”
With Bitcoin, that is not true, although. No accounts are crucial. [Some] pockets firms are doing this appropriately. Considered one of them is Samourai Pockets and one other is Pockets of Satoshi the place you don’t must open an account to make use of your individual cash.
They’re saying you shouldn’t be capable to use bitcoin with out having an account. That’s what they’re making an attempt to do within the EU.
Corva: We’re doing it right here within the US with the Digital Asset Anti-Cash Laundering Act (DAAMLA), too, the invoice that Elizabeth Warren drafted.
Fernandez: These persons are oath breakers. They’ve sworn an oath to defend and uphold the Structure, which ensures the free speech of each single American. Bitcoin is speech. It is a database the place speech is written down and saved and transmitted from one individual to a different.
And lest anybody suppose that I am selecting on the Democrats and never the Republicans, Cynthia Lummis has written a fully appalling invoice that I took nice pleasure in tearing to items on my weblog.
They don’t perceive what their function is as a public servant. A servant is just not in command of its masters. A servant is obedient to the citizens. It’s not their enterprise to inform folks you must KYC to make use of bitcoin.
Corva: On the subject of America and KYC-free bitcoin, do you see folks utilizing Azteco as a result of they need KYC-free bitcoin?
Fernandez: To ensure that the American market to be cracked, the service needs to be defined. Folks need to be deprogrammed. They don’t perceive that bitcoin is just not a automobile to make you earn extra fiat.
Folks must be damaged out of those unhealthy habits to be proven that really there are higher methods to get issues performed. The right instance of that is WhatsApp.
Earlier than WhatsApp, folks used to pay for SMS messages, whereas the thought of that is now unthinkable. An identical course of has to occur with Bitcoin the place you possibly can ship cash to members of the family with out having to undergo a 3rd celebration or pay exorbitant charges or establish your self or something like that.
With Bitcoin, you [also] get different refined advantages. Hyperinflation is beginning to kick in and persons are beginning to notice that there’s one thing mistaken with the cash.
Folks discover it very tough to go to the foundation explanation for the costs going up at McDonalds. Let’s say they did discover out the trigger, what might they do about it? They might go and get bitcoin, however it’s a number of steps down earlier than these persons are going to see bitcoin as the reply.
Corva: I agree.
Fernandez: Additionally, the present crop of companies — large companies like Binance, Coinbase — are synonymous with bitcoin. Azteco must be synonymous with getting bitcoin. The overwhelming majority of individuals on earth will not be wealthy. They do not have $100,000 to spend on bitcoin. They stay day after day.
Since these persons are not traders they usually do not have spare cash to maintain in bitcoin within the hopes that it should go up — which in fact it would — they should have bitcoin as day by day cash for on a regular basis spending.
When you begin speaking about this stuff, the enterprise alternatives and fashions begin to simply fall out of the dialog. All of those Cynthia Lummises and Elizabeth Warrens forestall these enterprise fashions from rising as a result of they’re regulating one thing they don’t have any enterprise regulating.
Corva: Talking of different companies, I’ve heard you say good issues about Machankura, a protocol that makes it simpler for Africans to make use of bitcoin in a KYC method, and that it serves as a praise to Azteco. What different firms within the Bitcoin area are a praise to Azteco?
Fernandez: Moral Bitcoin wallets are praise. By moral, I imply Samourai Pockets and Pockets of Satoshi. I do know that some folks don’t like Pockets of Satoshi as a result of the structure on the backend is to not their liking, however these folks don’t run companies — they don’t know the way tough it’s to do this stuff.
The latest entrant to that is the Bitkey pockets. This Bitkey pockets is completely unbelievable. They’ve thought of this correctly. The person interface and person expertise — it should make all people change their recreation.
I have been saying for a very long time that someone like Apple, Microsoft or another firm goes to get into Bitcoin and convey all of that person expertise considering to the method of utilizing Bitcoin. The present crop of firms haven’t thought of person expertise.
Jack Dorsey’s Bitkey has been a kick within the bottom to lots of people who notice that we will not simply stick with it doing what we need to do and anticipating folks to only settle for it — the concept you must write down your mnemonic earlier than you obtain your first transaction. It’s utterly loopy.
If Apple developed its personal Bitcoin pockets or clones one of many Bitcoin wallets on the market, Bitcoin goes to be uncovered to folks in a manner that is very simple to know, very simple to eat. There would be the new technology of Bitcoin customers for whom Bitcoin is completely regular — not threatening, intimidating or horrifying.
Corva: The identical manner that utilizing WhatsApp or Uber is regular now…
Fernandez: That is precisely proper. Bitcoin has to grow to be boring.
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