At their very core, digital currencies were created as a way for making monetary transactions free from centralized concern. Ironic today, as banks are now offering users a way to buy digital currencies, a concept that loses almost all meaning for economic freedom. That said, the benefits of digital currencies are not lost; they just require a “native” storage method. For the uninitiated, cryptocurrencies are stored in a crypto wallet, a device or program that cryptocurrency holders use to send, receive and manage digital currencies. However, wallets can take many forms – some of which don’t provide the end-user with full control over their crypto.
Noncustodial wallets (which do provide full control) can therefore be considered an essential part of economic freedom, enabling the user (and only the user!) to touch or move funds. Users are so in control of their funds that not even the company who issued the wallet, the team that developed it or any other application creator can stop these transactions from occurring.
As a result, users effectively become their own banks and have absolute control over their money. In some situations, the stakes are extremely high, with families holding their life savings purely in digital form as they flee their home country. In others, it’s a protection against high rates of inflation, often where cryptocurrencies are banned. Clearly, Bitcoin (BTC) and the power of the underlying blockchain have the ability to democratize the future of finance, but the difficulty of using them has long held back adoption.
Noncustodial wallets have been tagged as “difficult to understand” and “too complex” for non-native crypto users; however, innovators in the industry have worked with laser focus to bring the same user experience as custodial wallets without losing any of the benefits of decentralization. Among those innovators are the team behind the Bitcoin.com Wallet, a wallet primed for mass adoption.
Supporting economic freedom and inclusivity
“Our mission at Bitcoin.com is to support economic freedom, and we believe the noncustodial model is critical in that regard,” says Bitcoin.com CEO Dennis Jarvis. “Twenty-five million wallets created is a huge milestone for us, but we also view it as a bellwether for the crypto industry. It wasn’t long ago that you needed to be highly technical to use a noncustodial crypto wallet. These days, the user experience is practically indistinguishable from apps like PayPal or Robinhood. This is important because it opens up the doors to mass adoption of crypto as it was meant to be - i.e., without intermediaries - and that bodes well for economic freedom globally.”
In contrast to a custodial exchange where accounts may be restricted by location, The Bitcoin.com Wallet is available to anyone, anywhere. Consider, for example, the country of Nigeria, where cryptocurrencies are necessary to hedge against inflation but are restricted in use according to the government. The result is that Nigeria currently accounts for the highest level of installs of the Bitcoin.com Wallet compared to any other country over the past several weeks, as shown by data provided by the team themselves.
Beyond Bitcoin
Bitcoin.com’s Wallet is positioned as a multi-coin wallet that enables people to buy, sell, trade and use thousands of cryptocurrencies.
As their team describes it, “Bitcoin.com is naturally a Bitcoin first company, and we’re proud to offer some of the best tools for interacting with the Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash blockchains, both of which serve important (and different) use cases. But crypto has evolved beyond ‘just’ sound money. There are many exciting projects in the space, and a lot of them are being developed on other blockchains. By providing access to those other chains using our Wallet, we’re making it easier for people to experiment with and benefit from the emerging but powerful use cases — all in one convenient app.”
The Bitcoin.com Wallet already supports several emerging use cases, including connecting to and using DApps (decentralized applications) via the WalletConnect protocol. This protocol enables utility such as decentralized exchange, borrowing, lending, and trading nonfungible tokens (NFTs), all of which is done without the need to create an account or run the risk of being de-platformed or manage the limitations of geographic restrictions.
The Bitcoin.com Wallet also recently added support for a stablecoin backed by the U.S. dollar that automatically pays compounding interest at between 10-20% APY to holders.
The team believes that noncustodial wallets enable economic freedom. With the world now striving towards a more equal and secure future, it makes sense that this very technology is leading the way.
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