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 wished to make bitcoin simpler to acquire. He wished folks to have the ability to buy bitcoin as seamlessly as they had been capable of purchase a present card, and so he developed a system by which folks should buy 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 principle benefit to purchasing BTC by way of Azteco vouchers is the truth that you don’t need to disclose your identification to take action, to not point out the method of shopping for a voucher is fast and straightforward. Azteco gives each on-chain and Lightning capabilities, giving customers the selection to redeem their BTC on both the Bitcoin base chain or the Lightning Network, a Layer 2 funds community constructed on high of the Bitcoin blockchain.
In keeping with 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 beneath.
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 could be very tough. I spotted it would not need to be like this. We may use a well-recognized system like a top-up voucher, which billions of individuals use to high up their cell phones, and apply that course of to getting bitcoin. All we have now 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 will have a specific buyer base in thoughts if you designed Azteco?
Fernandez: Sure, I had myself in thoughts. I wished to have the ability to get bitcoin with out having to make any type of fuss or effort to do it. I wished 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 may assume that there have been different individuals who had been like me who may 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 way to get wealthy or for any purpose aside from to unravel their very own issues. And since persons are comparable, they clear up different folks’s issues, too.
Corva: Talking of your individual expertise. I’ve learn that you simply had been unbanked for a time frame. Is that this true and will you develop on it, in that case?
Fernandez: Properly, I grew to become unbanked for a purpose that I, till today, do not know. I went down to “my” financial institution to money a examine, and so they could not discover my account within the system. I had acquired no communication from them in writing or in any means. Abruptly, 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 huge 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 procuring 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 occasion. You may have management over your artificial cash.
Corva: I’ve heard you utilize this time period “synthetic money” earlier than, and also you’ve mentioned how we shouldn’t consult with bitcoin as precise cash. Why is it essential that we do that?
Fernandez: It is essential as a result of it is true. Bitcoin isn’t cash — it is a database. Can or not it’s used as cash? After all. It may be used as very, superb cash. It is a good simulation of cash. However it would not need to be cash for it to be helpful.
Additionally, if you happen to name bitcoin cash, all of the rules that the state has imposed on precise cash may be superimposed or brushed over Bitcoin inappropriately, making it arduous to make use of and slower to unfold. So, it is essential 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 anticipate if the rails to get onto Bitcoin had 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 incorrect in the way in which persons are fascinated about it, and so it is essential for us to consider it appropriately.
Corva: How many individuals is Azteco reaching? Put one other means, what number of vouchers did Azteco promote in Q3 or This fall of 2023?
Fernandez: The precise numbers I haven’t got at hand being the CEO and never the CFO. However we had our greatest ever month final month. I used to be instructed this yesterday. The variety of vouchers we’re promoting is growing, and this can be 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 strategy to get bitcoin. When folks uncover us, they are saying two issues: “First of all, why isn’t everything as easy as this?” and “How come I haven’t heard of this before?”
Issues are synergizing and coming collectively to convey us to a degree the place we’re a world drive for good and for getting Bitcoin to the individuals who want it essentially the most — the unbanked and the individuals who do not have entry to monetary rails or individuals who simply do not wish to be the victims of the monetary rails.
The old fashioned crop of Bitcoin companies which were serving folks over the past 10 years all imagine that Bitcoin is cash and make it very tough to get an account. All people’s so inured to the concept of getting a checking account or an account of any variety, whether or not it is via e mail or the rest. The idea instantly is, “Well, of course, I have to have an account in order to use this service.”
With Bitcoin, that is not true, although. No accounts are essential. [Some] pockets firms are doing this appropriately. One in all them is Samourai Pockets and one other is Pockets of Satoshi the place you don’t have to open an account to make use of your individual cash.
They’re saying you shouldn’t have the ability to use bitcoin with out having an account. That’s what they’re attempting to do within the EU.
Corva: We’re doing it right here within the US with the Digital Asset Anti-Money 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 assume that I am selecting on the Democrats and never the Republicans, Cynthia Lummis has written a completely appalling bill that I took nice pleasure in tearing to pieces on my blog.
They don’t perceive what their function is as a public servant. A servant isn’t in command of its masters. A servant is obedient to the voters. It’s not their enterprise to inform folks it’s a must to 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 isn’t a automobile to make you earn extra fiat.
Folks should be damaged out of those unhealthy habits to be proven that really there are higher methods to get issues carried out. The right instance of that is WhatsApp.
Earlier than WhatsApp, folks used to pay for SMS messages, whereas the concept of that is now unthinkable. An analogous course of has to occur with Bitcoin the place you possibly can ship cash to relations with out having to undergo a 3rd occasion 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 incorrect with the cash.
Folks discover it very tough to go to the foundation reason for the costs going up at McDonalds. Let’s say they did discover out the trigger, what may they do about it? They may go and get bitcoin, but it surely’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 — huge companies like Binance, Coinbase — are synonymous with bitcoin. Azteco must be synonymous with getting bitcoin. The overwhelming majority of individuals on earth should not wealthy. They do not have $100,000 to spend on bitcoin. They stay daily.
Since these persons are not buyers and so they do not have spare cash to maintain in bitcoin within the hopes that it will go up — which after all it is going to — they should have bitcoin as each day cash for on a regular basis spending.
When you begin speaking about these items, the enterprise alternatives and fashions begin to simply fall out of the dialog. All of those Cynthia Lummises and Elizabeth Warrens stop 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 an excellent 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 understand how tough it’s to do these items.
The most recent entrant to that is the Bitkey wallet. This Bitkey pockets is completely unbelievable. They’ve considered this correctly. The person interface and person expertise — it will 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 produce all of that person expertise pondering to the method of utilizing Bitcoin. The present crop of firms haven’t considered person expertise.
Jack Dorsey’s Bitkey has been a kick within the bottom to lots of people who notice that we won’t simply keep on doing what we wish to do and anticipating folks to simply settle for it — the concept it’s a must to write down your mnemonic earlier than you obtain your first transaction. It’s fully 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 means that is very straightforward to know, very straightforward to devour. There would be the new technology of Bitcoin customers for whom Bitcoin is completely regular — not threatening, intimidating or horrifying.
Corva: The identical means that utilizing WhatsApp or Uber is regular now…
Fernandez: That is precisely proper. Bitcoin has to develop into boring.