Two recent Stanford University graduates have released peer-to-peer bitcoin wallet Backslash, which uses social media profiles to easily send bitcoin.
Founders Roneil Rumburg and Paul Benigeri found it difficult to find and send bitcoin to one another, and chose to combat the user experience problem in their new product, VentureBeat reported. Backslash hooks into Facebook and Twitter, allowing users to send bitcoin to another social media identity. The ‘friend’ then receives a message through Facebook or Twitter with a link to the coins. If they also have a Backslash account, they can receive bitcoin directly to their wallet.
Several other wallets connect to social media. QuickCoin allows bitcoin to be send via Facebook, and ChangeTip send micropayments through many more social media sites than Backlash, including Twitter, GitHub, Reddit, and Tumblr. As it focuses on smaller amounts, the service has a $25 limit.
Backslash doesn’t actually store bitcoin, so can only loosely be called a wallet. Its focus is on fast transactions instead, making it necessary to prompt users to spend and send bitcoin by giving them small amounts of bitcoin – or “bits” every time they convince a friend to sign up.
The company has attracted 15,000 users since its public beta launch in September, who have made around 500,000 transactions. The service allows transactions in bitcoin and dogecoin, and a mobile app is in the works.
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