Firm Identify: 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 Non-public? Non-public
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 wherein 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 international locations, purchasable on-line or with money with in-person distributors. The primary benefit to purchasing BTC by way of Azteco vouchers is the truth that you don’t must disclose your id to take action, to not point out the method of shopping for a voucher is fast and simple. Azteco provides 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 high 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 offered: 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 troublesome. I noticed it would not must be like this. We might use a well-known system like a top-up voucher, which billions of individuals use to high up their cellphones, and apply that course of to getting bitcoin. All now we have 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 selected buyer base in thoughts while 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 sort 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 might assume that there have been different individuals who had been like me who might perceive the proposition and the benefit 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 individuals are fixing issues for themselves, not as a method to get wealthy or for any purpose aside from to resolve their very own issues. And since individuals are related, they clear up different folks’s issues, too.
Corva: Talking of your personal expertise. I’ve learn that you just had been unbanked for a time period. Is that this true and will you increase on it, in that case?
Fernandez: Nicely, I turned unbanked for a purpose that I, till at the present time, do not know. I went right 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. Rapidly, 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 massive lesson about how troublesome it’s to do something within the twenty first century if you do not have entry to banking services. You’ll be able to neglect buying on-line. You’ll be able to neglect any sort of comfort of going right into a retailer and paying with a card. All of that goes away.
So, after 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 get together. You’ve 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 check 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? In fact. It may be used as very, superb cash. It is a good simulation of cash. But it surely would not must 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 will 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 sort of unfold into folks’s telephones that we might anticipate if the rails to get onto Bitcoin had been frictionless, identical to they’re with WhatsApp.
The truth that Bitcoin has not reached that variety of folks signifies that there is one thing unsuitable in the way in which individuals are eager about it, and so it is essential for us to consider it accurately.
Corva: How many individuals is Azteco reaching? Put one other means, 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 informed this yesterday. The variety of vouchers we’re promoting is growing, and it is a direct results of our growing our distribution and in addition the sentiment in direction of Bitcoin altering on a world scale.
We are the best technique to get bitcoin. When folks uncover us, they are saying two issues: “To start with, why is not every thing as simple as this?” and “How come I have never heard of this earlier than?”
Issues are synergizing and coming collectively to deliver us to some extent 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 haven’t got 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 over the past 10 years all consider that Bitcoin is cash and make it very troublesome to get an account. All people’s so inured to the thought of getting a checking account or an account of any form, whether or not it is by way of e mail or anything. The idea instantly is, “Nicely, in fact, I’ve to have an account with the intention to use this service.”
With Bitcoin, that is not true, although. No accounts are vital. [Some] pockets firms are doing this accurately. One among 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 personal cash.
They’re saying you shouldn’t be capable of 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-Cash Laundering Act (DAAMLA), too, the invoice that Elizabeth Warren drafted.
Fernandez: These individuals 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 choosing 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 isn’t accountable for its masters. A servant is obedient to the voters. 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 must be deprogrammed. They don’t perceive that bitcoin isn’t a automobile to make you earn extra fiat.
Folks have to be damaged out of those unhealthy habits to be proven that really there are higher methods to get issues completed. 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. The same course of has to occur with Bitcoin the place you may ship cash to members of the family with out having to undergo a 3rd get together 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 individuals are beginning to understand that there’s one thing unsuitable with the cash.
Folks discover it very troublesome 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 may go and get bitcoin, however it’s a number of steps down earlier than these individuals are going to see bitcoin as the reply.
Corva: I agree.
Fernandez: Additionally, the present crop of companies — massive companies like Binance, Coinbase — are synonymous with bitcoin. Azteco must be synonymous with getting bitcoin. The overwhelming majority of individuals on earth are usually not wealthy. They do not have $100,000 to spend on bitcoin. They dwell day after day.
Since these individuals are not buyers and so they haven’t got spare cash to maintain in bitcoin within the hopes that it’ll go up — which in fact it’ll — they should have bitcoin as each 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 stop these enterprise fashions from rising as a result of they’re regulating one thing they haven’t 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 house are a praise to Azteco?
Fernandez: Moral Bitcoin wallets are a great 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 troublesome it’s to do this stuff.
The most recent 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’ll make everyone change their recreation.
I have been saying for a very long time that any person like Apple, Microsoft or another firm goes to get into Bitcoin and convey all of that person expertise pondering 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 understand that we will not simply stick with it doing what we need to do and anticipating folks to only settle for it — the concept that you must 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 simple to know, very simple to devour. There would be the new era of Bitcoin customers for whom Bitcoin is completely regular — not threatening, intimidating or scary.
Corva: The identical means that utilizing WhatsApp or Uber is regular now…
Fernandez: That is precisely proper. Bitcoin has to turn out to be boring.
