Bridgewalker: euro-denominated wallet for the Bitcoin economy[Now part of Hive!]
I am excited to announce the launch of "Bridgewalker". After giving Instawallet into the capable hands of Paymium, I had some time to focus on this new project, which I believe is an important stepping stone in making Bitcoin more useful while it is still under the influence of the volatility of its small market.
The basic idea is simple: Bridgewalker is a (hosted) Bitcoin wallet for Android smartphones, which allows you to receive and send bitcoins. So far, pretty standard. The difference is, that you will never hold bitcoins for more than a few seconds, as Bridgewalker will automatically exchange them for Euros as soon as you receive them (and they confirm) and will only buy bitcoins just that moment when you are about to send them. You can therefore use Bitcoin solely as a payment network, while being protected from market swings.
Get the app at: https://www.bridgewalkerapp.com/ !
A word about fees: You might assume that all that exchanging back and forth is prohibitively expensive. But it is actually not too bad (in my opinion), although there is certainly room for improvement. The fee for a "round trip" currently works out to around 1.5 %. Which means, if you send 1 BTC to Bridgewalker and then back right away, you are left with 0.985 BTC. This includes both exchange fees and losses through market spread (Bridgewalker currently uses Mt.Gox for currency exchange). The fees should go down though, as Bridgewalker's volume increases.
One additional feature: Green addresses (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Green_address) make a comeback here. Bridgewalker accepts transactions from certain green addresses (at the moment only Mt.Gox) instantaneously and in turn sends out transactions that can be identified by the green address 1MAxx46Dp3tFw933PxPwEYYGCpxYda2pyH .
Feedback and comments much appreciated! :-)
Edit: Updated description to account for change of counter currency from USD to EUR (11/2013).
Edit: Bridgewalker has been acquired by Hive! (11/2013).
Edit: Bridgewalker is shutting down (03/2014).
The basic idea is simple: Bridgewalker is a (hosted) Bitcoin wallet for Android smartphones, which allows you to receive and send bitcoins. So far, pretty standard. The difference is, that you will never hold bitcoins for more than a few seconds, as Bridgewalker will automatically exchange them for Euros as soon as you receive them (and they confirm) and will only buy bitcoins just that moment when you are about to send them. You can therefore use Bitcoin solely as a payment network, while being protected from market swings.
Get the app at: https://www.bridgewalkerapp.com/ !
A word about fees: You might assume that all that exchanging back and forth is prohibitively expensive. But it is actually not too bad (in my opinion), although there is certainly room for improvement. The fee for a "round trip" currently works out to around 1.5 %. Which means, if you send 1 BTC to Bridgewalker and then back right away, you are left with 0.985 BTC. This includes both exchange fees and losses through market spread (Bridgewalker currently uses Mt.Gox for currency exchange). The fees should go down though, as Bridgewalker's volume increases.
One additional feature: Green addresses (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Green_address) make a comeback here. Bridgewalker accepts transactions from certain green addresses (at the moment only Mt.Gox) instantaneously and in turn sends out transactions that can be identified by the green address 1MAxx46Dp3tFw933PxPwEYYGCpxYda2pyH .
Feedback and comments much appreciated! :-)
Edit: Updated description to account for change of counter currency from USD to EUR (11/2013).
Edit: Bridgewalker has been acquired by Hive! (11/2013).
Edit: Bridgewalker is shutting down (03/2014).