Two days ago, or to be more particular on the 31st December, a message appeared on Reddit advertising a new Bitcoin service and asking for support. The new Bitcoin wallet platform 37coins.com is positioned as a new and safe way to transfer funds without any unnecessary complications. The author of the post, possibly the developer and owner of the page, compares his creation with mPesa and Kipochi. mPesa is already one of the most advanced and developed mobile-phone based money transfer and microfinancing services, widely used in Tanzania and Kenya. Kipochi is a Bitcoin platform located in UK, but also having representatives in Kenya, Nicaragua, Spain and Malaysia, also showing interest in 3rd world countries having the lack of banking services there.
37coins is generally a set of tools now. It should bring SMS wallets to any kind of mobile network with no permission from the operators. How can it be performed? Even a so called “dump” feature-phone is capable to create a gateway to the Internet, not to mention that smartphones definitely will do so. Everyone can open a gateway, provide information about it on the homepage of the service and in case it will be used he or she will receive some money that was accepted from the user as a fee. The idea is to make the network safe and reliable, and also to earn some coins and attract more users, creating a stabile net of phones. As the service now runs in prototype mode it allows sending and receiving funds as SMS shortcodes. The page of the company features a list of commands that in form of text massages will allow to perform the offered actions – among them request on available commands, search of sellers in the same country, putting yourself as a seller on the network, buying of Bitcoin, sending them and browsing completed transactions.
The current main request from the company is to open more gateways to enable testing and correcting of possible mistakes. Any kind of support, advice or critics is welcome as 49 comments are already in the thread during these first days of the new year. Most of the opinions are very encouraging – there are praises, comparisons in favor of the new service instead of traditional coin apps and some questions.
For those, who got interested in 37coins, please visit the homepage or take up a contact by phone, email or via the Twitter network. More news on the topic to follow as soon as the platform will open all planned options.