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This week’s stories include mainstream media’s Bitcoin FOMO

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In this episode, Lolli CEO and co-founder Alex Adelman joins the Bitcoin Magazine Podcast to discuss Lolli's rapid growth, democratizing commerce, driving bitcoin adoption and the future of video games.



Lolli, the rewards application that lets users earn bitcoin when they shop online, has garnered more than 900 merchant partnerships since its inception, with more joining every day. Its most recent partnership, announced today, is with&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://udemy.com" target="_blank">Udemy.com</a>, an online learning platform aimed at professional adults seeking tech skills. Users can earn up to 18 percent back in bitcoin on all courses, which range from bitcoin and blockchain to design and IT lessons.



<h4>Resources</h4>



News:



<ul><li><a href="https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/the-irs-is-sending-bitcoin-investors-reminders-to-pay-crypto-tax">The IRS is Sending Bitcoin Investors Reminders to Pay Crypto Tax</a></li><li><a href="https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/venezuela-uses-bitcoin-circumvent-sanctions">Venezuela Uses Bitcoin to Circumvent U.S. Sanctions</a></li><li><a href="https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/liquid-launches-support-for-tether">Liquid Launches Support for Tether</a></li></ul>



Interview:



<ul><li><a href="https://medium.com/@alexadelman/lolli-bitcoin-for-everyone-aa8f52e0ffa">Lolli - Bitcoin For Everyone</a></li><li><a href="https://blog.lolli.com/lolli-announces-partnership-with-udemy/">Earn While You Learn With Udemy.com</a></li></ul>



This show is also on:



<ul><li><a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bitcoin-magazine-podcast/id1459884105">iTunes</a></li><li><a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/1IxBiqXrUwWUgwiQwKWwxk">Spotify</a></li><li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsIA801u-VFyH27VlOvNuSg/featured">Youtube</a></li><li><a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/btc-media-2/the-bitcoin-magazine-podcast">Stitcher</a></li><li><a href="https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/Idpcekhbngvtfise5vetvbrxwxy">Google Play</a></li><li><a href="https://overcast.fm/itunes1459884105/the-bitcoin-magazine-podcast">Overcast</a></li></ul>



Find more episodes of The Bitcoin Magazine Podcast&nbsp;<a href="https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/category/bitcoinmagazine">here</a>!

Bitcoin Magazine provides news, analysis, information, commentary and price data about Bitcoin.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Magazine's articles are written by a paid staff of full-time, part-time and freelance journalists with a passion for Bitcoin. Our writers adhere to a strict code of journalistic standards and ethics, and do not accept payment from third-party sources for coverage. Bitcoin Magazine also accepts articles from guest contributors from the Bitcoin community with particular insights to share.

This week&rsquo;s stories include mainstream media&rsquo;s Bitcoin FOMO

Bullish on Bitcoin

In this Bitcoin Magazine podcast episode, Lolli CEO and co-founder Alex Adelman discusses democratizing commerce and driving bitcoin adoption

Lolli&rsquo;s Alex Adelman on Earning Bitcoin and Democratizing Commerce

In this episode, Lolli CEO and co-founder Alex Adelman joins the Bitcoin Magazine Podcast to discuss Lolli&#039;s rapid growth, democratizing commerce, driving bitcoin adoption and the future of video games. Lolli, the rewards application that lets users earn bitcoin when they shop online, has garnered more than 900 merchant partnerships since its inception, with more joining every day. Its most recent partnership, announced today, is with&nbsp;Udemy.com, an online learning platform aimed at professional adults seeking tech skills. Users can earn up to 18 percent back in bitcoin on all courses, which range from bitcoin and blockchain to design and IT lessons. Resources. News: The IRS is Sending Bitcoin Investors Reminders to Pay Crypto TaxVenezuela Uses Bitcoin to Circumvent U.S. SanctionsLiquid Launches Support for Tether Interview: Lolli - Bitcoin For EveryoneEarn While You Learn With Udemy.com This show is also on: iTunesSpotifyYoutubeStitcherGoogle PlayOvercast Find more episodes of The Bitcoin Magazine Podcast&nbsp;here!

Lolli’s Alex Adelman on Earning Bitcoin and Democratizing Commerce –

Bitcoin Magazine is the oldest and most established source of news, information and expert commentary on Bitcoin, its underlying blockchain technology and the industry that has grown up around it. Since 2012, Bitcoin Magazine has provided analysis, research, education and thought leadership at the intersection of finance and technology.

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Lolli&#039;s Alex Adelman on Earning Bitcoin and Democratizing Commerce - Bitcoin Magazine

Lolli Expands Popular Travel Category With Hotels.com Partnership

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Bitcoin-rebate service <a href="https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/sats-back-how-ebates-bitcoin-plans-convert-holders-spenders">Lolli</a> is expanding its roster of travel partners. The company <a href="https://blog.lolli.com/lolli-partners-with-hotels-com/">announced today</a> that it has struck a deal with Hotels.com to allow users to earn 3.5 percent sats back on all bookings on the website.



Lolli launched in the trough of the 2018 bear market when bitcoin began its descent into the $3,000 range. Even so, that didn’t stop the service from swelling to 10,000 users by March 2019. With the Chrome/Firefox plug in, users can earn a percentage of every purchase back in bitcoin when they shop at one of Lolli’s 500-plus partners. These include Walmart, Macy’s, Overstock, Barnes &amp; Noble and many others, including travel companies.



<h4>Travel Rebates in High Demand</h4>



In fact, travel has emerged as the platform’s most popular category. Lolli co-founder and CEO, Alex Adelman, told Bitcoin Magazine that people use travel services like VRBO, Hilton, Marriott, Bookings.com and CheapOAir more than anything else to earn bitcoin on Lolli. This is mainly due to the fact that these particular services give healthy rebates (CheapOAir, for instance, pays a flat 0.001987 BTC and Marriott pays 6.5 percent back) and that travel purchases are large, netting more bitcoin back in return, which makes them ideal for stacking sats.



Available in 34 languages and with a hotel list 325,000 strong, Hotels.com is bound to help this trend. It is the third most-used travel site in the world behind Bookings.com (number two) and Airbnb (number one), meaning Lolli now has four booking websites in the travel industry’s top ten most used (Marriott and Hilton are number six and number 10, respectively).&nbsp;



According to the Lolli announcement, people spent $1.1 trillion on travel in the U.S. alone. If Lolli was to capture even 1 percent of this market, that would mean 3.24 million people spending $11 billion and earning 34,000 BTC ($385 million) back.&nbsp;



The company is striving toward this goal and won’t be resting on the laurels of its most recent deal. Adelman told Bitcoin Magazine that Lolli is leveraging its Hotels.com and Booking.com partnerships “to begin international expansion in the coming months.”

Colin is an associate editor and staff writer for Bitcoin Magazine. He&#39;s proud to call Nashville his home, where he lives with his family and doesn&#39;t eat hot chicken as much as you might think.

Colin Harper

lolli (1)

Rebate platform Lolli has struck a deal with Hotels.com to allow users to earn 3.5 percent sats back on all bookings on the website.

Lolli Expands Popular Travel Category With Hotels.com Partnership &raquo; Bitcoin Magazine Lolli Expands Popular...

Lolli Expands Popular Travel Category With Hotels.com Partnership &raquo; Bitcoin Magazine Lolli Expands Popular Travel Category With Hotels.com Partnership

Bitcoin-rebate service Lolli is expanding its roster of travel partners. The company announced today that it has struck a deal with Hotels.com to allow users to earn 3.5 percent sats back on all bookings on the website. Lolli launched in the trough of the 2018 bear market when bitcoin began its descent into the $3,000 range. Even so, that didn&rsquo;t stop the service from swelling to 10,000 users by March 2019. With the Chrome/Firefox plug in, users can earn a percentage of every purchase back in bitcoin when they shop at one of Lolli&rsquo;s 500-plus partners. These include Walmart, Macy&rsquo;s, Overstock, Barnes &amp; Noble and many others, including travel companies. Travel Rebates in High Demand. In fact, travel has emerged as the platform&rsquo;s most popular category. Lolli co-founder and CEO, Alex Adelman, told Bitcoin Magazine that people use travel services like VRBO, Hilton, Marriott, Bookings.com and CheapOAir more than anything else to earn bitcoin on Lolli. This is mainly due to the fact that these particular services give healthy rebates (CheapOAir, for instance, pays a flat 0.001987 BTC and Marriott pays 6.5 percent back) and that travel purchases are large, netting more bitcoin back in return, which makes them ideal for stacking sats. Available in 34 languages and with a hotel list 325,000 strong, Hotels.com is bound to help this trend. It is the third most-used travel site in the world behind Bookings.com (number two) and Airbnb (number one), meaning Lolli now has four booking websites in the travel industry&rsquo;s top ten most used (Marriott and Hilton are number six and number 10, respectively).&nbsp; According to the Lolli announcement, people spent $1.1 trillion on travel in the U.S. alone. If Lolli was to capture even 1 percent of this market, that would mean 3.24 million people spending $11 billion and earning 34,000 BTC ($385 million) back.&nbsp; The company is striving toward this goal and won&rsquo;t be resting on the laurels of its most recent deal. Adelman told Bitcoin Magazine that Lolli is leveraging its Hotels.com and Booking.com partnerships &ldquo;to begin international expansion in the coming months.&rdquo;

Colin is an associate editor and staff writer for Bitcoin Magazine. He's proud to call Nashville his home, where he spends his days shouting at peddle taverns and trying to find affordable parking downtown. If it wasn't already obvious, he holds bitcoin.

Apps, Service and Devices That Put Every Bitcoiner in the Driver’s Seat

Apps, Service and Devices That Put Every Bitcoiner in the Driver’s Seat - Bitcoin Magazine

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In the beginning, there was Bitcoin Core. Satoshi Nakamoto’s seminal software implementation for the Bitcoin network was a one-stop shop for early users: For the earliest adopters, it functioned as a full node, wallet and miner. 



Ten years and a few moons later, the Bitcoin service industry is undergoing a technical renaissance. Today, applications and hardware abound that give bitcoiners a greater degree of flexibility over how they manage their coins than ever before. From mixing services to plug-and-play nodes, hardware wallets to browser extensions, these tools have made Bitcoin more private, safer and easier to use, expanding its use cases along the way.



Below is a list of Bitcoin applications, services and hardware that we think should be on your radar. Please note that this list is not definitive and definitely not exhaustive. There are plenty of great tools out there that didn’t make the list, and we tried to steer clear of wallets/exchanges except where they provide special services (like CoinJoin, for instance). That doesn’t mean we don’t like them! We just felt jazzed about these in particular.



<h4>Hardware Wallets</h4>



We all know the old maxim: safety first. In Bitcoin, this could very well be amended to: safety always. 



You can never be too protective or paranoid when securing your private keys, and if you’ve got a significant chunk of cash in crypto, hardware wallets are a must. Shy of an absolutely apocalyptic scenario (we have brain wallets for that), these cold storage wallets provide the utmost security for holding your coins.



And few companies have done it better (or longer) than Ledger and Trezor. Trezor was first on the scene when it released its flagship wallet, Trezor One, in 2014. The Ledger Nano S, Ledger’s own flagship, would launch two years later but would quickly grow in popularity to become Trezor’s premier rival. Both support web interfaces to manage your coins, can interoperate with other wallets and services (like Wasabi and Casa) and support multiple coins.



There are a few key differences between these wallets, namely in price (Ledger is cheaper) and security mechanisms (the technology behind Ledger isn’t open source), and neither is perfect. Both, for instance, have been exposed with <a href="https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/security-researchers-reveal-wallet-vulnerabilities-stage-35c3/">the same security vulnerability</a>. In a separate instance, <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/8631ol/ledger_wallet_just_got_backdoored_by_a_15yearold/">Ledger was even backdoored by a 15-year-old</a> hacking prodigy; Ledger also recently <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/trezor-responds-to-ledger-report-on-vulnerabilities-in-its-hardware-wallets">revealed fresh weak points</a> in Trezor’s wallets (because vulnerability loves company). 



It should be noted that, in each of these scenarios, the hackers would have to have physical control of the devices, advanced hacking skills and plenty of time to crack the wallets, and both companies rolled out patches for the vulnerabilities. 



Even so, both wallets feature universal two-factor authentication, and overall, both wallets offer nearly bulletproof security (I have both and find them equally useful).



We focused on Ledger and Trezor because they’re some of the oldest, most trusted and most popular hardware wallets in the space. But there are plenty of others that will get the job done, as well, like <a href="https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-hardware-wallet-keepkey-launches-and-begins-shipping-1443113139/">KeepKey</a>, <a href="https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/physical-bitcoins-our-hands-end-end-review-opendime/">Opendime</a> (which is a one-time use wallet that is rendered inoperable after one use), <a href="https://shiftcrypto.ch/">BitBox</a> and <a href="https://coldcardwallet.com/">Coldcard</a>.



<h4>Casa</h4>



Casa is like a cypherpunk Swiss Army Knife.



The security company offers perhaps the strongest suite of security-minded services in the industry. Depending on your level of membership, the Casa Keymaster offers multi-signature wallet services that splits your private key between three or up to five hardware devices (it’s compatible with Ledger and Trezor), requiring you to sign off on two or three of these, respectively, to send a transaction. It also includes a mobile key for smaller amounts, with the website impressing that larger amounts should be stored on hardware devices.



These memberships come in four tiers: silver (free), gold ($300 a year), platinum ($1,800 a year) and diamond ($5,000 a year). Each comes with basic (2-3) multisig, emergency key recovery and seedless key recovery; the only thing separating the gold membership from silver is that it comes with a Trezor One and a Casa node. The platinum comes with three hardware wallets (customer choice of Trezor or Ledger), a surprise gift, 24/7 customer service and a Casa node, while the diamond also comes with all of this plus an inheritance planning, multi-user transaction signing and not one but two Casa nodes.



Speaking of the Casa node, let’s talk about it. This plug-and-play hardware is perfect for nontechnical enthusiasts and hodlers who want all the comforts of running a full node without the hassle of bootstrapping it on their own. It comes pre-synced, so you just need to download the blocks that were hashed in the interim between shipping and setup. This greases the block syncing and setup process significantly (it took me only a night’s worth of downloading to get the fully-updated ledger on the device).



You can manage your node from a webportal, and it also comes with Lightning Network support so that you can run your own Lightning node on top of mainnet. You can get a Casa node for $300 — a steal when you consider that it comes with a year of multisig key services and a Trezor One (which runs about $76).



<h4>CoinJoin (Wasabi, Samourai and JoinMarket)</h4>



If privacy is your MO, <a href="https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/version-114-gives-wasabi-wallet-boost-privacy-security-and-ux/">Wasabi</a> makes a damn fine wallet.



The Tor-compatible software allows users to manage several wallets, generate multiple receiving addresses and integrate hardware wallets with the Coldcard Mark1, Trezor Model T and Ledger Nano S.



But those features aren’t what make Wasabi special. No, its key feature comes with its coin tumbling service, CoinJoin. The <a href="https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/wasabi-wallet-10-here-make-bitcoin-transactions-more-private/">CoinJoin protocol</a> allows users to batch their bitcoin into a bundled transaction to obscure who sent what where (though for this to work effectively, each user needs to send the same amount to make each output fungible).



Wasabi claims to have made 35,498 bitcoins fungible since CoinJoin’s introduction on August 1, 2018. 



If you want a mobile version (Wasabi is desktop only), then Samourai is your best option for privacy. Like Wasabi, it is <a href="https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/samourai-wallet-adds-tor-integration-privacy-push/">Tor-enabled</a> and recently added a mixing features known as STONEWALLx2 and Stowaway, which make use of Samourai’s <a href="https://blog.samouraiwallet.com/post/183378923792/collaborative-transactions-cahoots">Cahoots</a> transaction framework.



Both features are still in the early stages. Samourai calls them “easter eggs” in its announcement and makes it clear that they’re not as accessible to the casual user. 



Finally, we would be remiss to not mention <a href="https://joinmarket.me/">Joinmarket</a>, which Samourai so aptly calls “the OG in bitcoin privacy.” The wallet has been facilitating CoinJoin transactions since 2015.



It should also be noted that, with Wasabi, Samourai and Joinmarket’s mixing services, no single user can tumble transactions alone (unless they are using multiple wallets), as the obfuscation techniques can only work with multiple transaction outputs. 



<h4>Lolli</h4>



In the words of Bitcoin evangelist Matt Odell: “Stay humble. Stack sats.” Luckily, there’s an app for that — and it’s not an exchange.



<a href="https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/sats-back-how-ebates-bitcoin-plans-convert-holders-spenders/">Lolli</a> is a Chrome and Firefox browser plug-in which rewards users with bitcoin for purchases from participating online retailers. This sats-back model is like Ebates for bitcoin; in fact, its founders, Alex Adelman and Matt Senter, drummed up the model while working at Ebates and were looking for a way to lubricate the friction people face when buying into bitcoin.



What better way than to reward them in bitcoin for buying things they already want, use and need? With Lolli, you can earn bitcoin back on anything from travel to clothes to groceries and even craft beer memberships. More than 500 merchants have partnered with the service, and Adleman told Bitcoin Magazine that, as they saw at Ebates, rewards programs like these can shape customer loyalty, and that’s attractive to Lolli’s partners. 



If a bitcoiner sees that they can receive 5 percent back when renting on VRBO as opposed to Airbnb, well, they’re going to take that — same as if they can earn bitcoin back from Jet for everyday purchases instead of Amazon.



<h4>Tippin.me</h4>



“You need a token for that. Bitcoin doesn’t scale, bro.”



Nah.



<a href="https://tippin.me/">Tippin.me</a> has become a darling of Crypto Twitter for its simple yet engaging use case. Using the Chrome/Firefox browser extension, Twitter users can easily receive or dole out Lightning payments in the form of “tips,” receiving these in Tippin.me’s custodial wallet. The application is a pioneer for giving users on a social media platform as prominent as Twitter the ability to monetize their content or reward other users for content they especially enjoy (Reddit has something similar with a <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7ziqh9/bitcoin_tip_bot/">bitcoin tipbot</a>).



It played a pivotal role in the <a href="https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/vidi-vici-satoshi-lightning-torch-has-reached-its-final-destination/">passing of the Lightning Torch</a>, giving users an easy, Twitter-endogenous application to take and pass the torch when it was low capacity. Eventually, it caught the attention of Twitter’s co-founder, Jack Dorsey, who gave it <a href="https://twitter.com/jack/status/1098255550129655809?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1098255550129655809%7Ctwgr%5E393039363b636f6e74726f6c&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsbtc.com%2F2019%2F02%2F20%2Fdorsey-supports-lightning-twitter%2F">his stamp of approval</a>.



The application, which is over 14,000 users strong, <a href="https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/tippin-enters-version-10-promising-new-feature/">released version 1.0</a> recently, which added a number of improvements including messaging, sending tips directly from balances and an option to top-off wallet balances from on-chain transactions.



<h4>Messari</h4>



Messari.io is like CoinMarketCap’s awesome little brother. We’re just so darn proud of it.



But seriously, Messari.io was founded in October 2017 to “[bring] transparency to the cryptoeconomy.” This became evident when it launched its market dashboard with real-time tracking of 600 cryptocurrencies. Its charts include reported volume from exchanges while correcting this volume to more accurately convey real trading volume (for example, at the time of writing, the report volume of the entire market is $50 billion, but Messari lists real volume as just over $2 billion — a bit of a gap). 



Alongside this more accurate market volume metric, the service lets you tailor charts for a variety of specific criteria including consensus mechanism, Bitcoin fork and category of asset — oh, and some colorful criteria including memes, scams and possible scams.



The site also aggregates news from across the cryptocurrency industry and condenses them into TL;DR bits, and it also curates a weekly newsletter. Like what you see? Messari also sells its API which it markets as “the world's most comprehensive institutional grade Bitcoin and blockchain data API, ranging from market data to fundamentals, blockchain metrics, and news.”

The Bitcoin service industry is undergoing a technical renaissance. Here is a list of the applications, services and hardware that should be on your radar.

Apps, Services and Devices That Put Every Bitcoiner in the Driver&rsquo;s Seat

In the beginning, there was Bitcoin Core. Satoshi Nakamoto&rsquo;s seminal software implementation for the Bitcoin network was a one-stop shop for early users: For the earliest adopters, it functioned as a full node, wallet and miner. Ten years and a few moons later, the Bitcoin service industry is undergoing a technical renaissance. Today, applications and hardware abound that give bitcoiners a greater degree of flexibility over how they manage their coins than ever before. From mixing services to plug-and-play nodes, hardware wallets to browser extensions, these tools have made Bitcoin more private, safer and easier to use, expanding its use cases along the way. Below is a list of Bitcoin applications, services and hardware that we think should be on your radar. Please note that this list is not definitive and definitely not exhaustive. There are plenty of great tools out there that didn&rsquo;t make the list, and we tried to steer clear of wallets/exchanges except where they provide special services (like CoinJoin, for instance). That doesn&rsquo;t mean we don&rsquo;t like them! We just felt jazzed about these in particular. Hardware Wallets. We all know the old maxim: safety first. In Bitcoin, this could very well be amended to: safety always. You can never be too protective or paranoid when securing your private keys, and if you&rsquo;ve got a significant chunk of cash in crypto, hardware wallets are a must. Shy of an absolutely apocalyptic scenario (we have brain wallets for that), these cold storage wallets provide the utmost security for holding your coins. And few companies have done it better (or longer) than Ledger and Trezor. Trezor was first on the scene when it released its flagship wallet, Trezor One, in 2014. The Ledger Nano S, Ledger&rsquo;s own flagship, would launch two years later but would quickly grow in popularity to become Trezor&rsquo;s premier rival. Both support web interfaces to manage your coins, can interoperate with other wallets and services (like Wasabi and Casa) and support multiple coins. There are a few key differences between these wallets, namely in price (Ledger is cheaper) and security mechanisms (the technology behind Ledger isn&rsquo;t open source), and neither is perfect. Both, for instance, have been exposed with the same security vulnerability. In a separate instance, Ledger was even backdoored by a 15-year-old hacking prodigy; Ledger also recently revealed fresh weak points in Trezor&rsquo;s wallets (because vulnerability loves company). It should be noted that, in each of these scenarios, the hackers would have to have physical control of the devices, advanced hacking skills and plenty of time to crack the wallets, and both companies rolled out patches for the vulnerabilities. Even so, both wallets feature universal two-factor authentication, and overall, both wallets offer nearly bulletproof security (I have both and find them equally useful). We focused on Ledger and Trezor because they&rsquo;re some of the oldest, most trusted and most popular hardware wallets in the space. But there are plenty of others that will get the job done, as well, like KeepKey, Opendime (which is a one-time use wallet that is rendered inoperable after one use), BitBox and Coldcard. Casa. Casa is like a cypherpunk Swiss Army Knife. The security company offers perhaps the strongest suite of security-minded services in the industry. Depending on your level of membership, the Casa Keymaster offers multi-signature wallet services that splits your private key between three or up to five hardware devices (it&rsquo;s compatible with Ledger and Trezor), requiring you to sign off on two or three of these, respectively, to send a transaction. It also includes a mobile key for smaller amounts, with the website impressing that larger amounts should be stored on hardware devices. These memberships come in four tiers: silver (free), gold ($300 a year), platinum ($1,800 a year) and diamond ($5,000 a year). Each comes with basic (2-3) multisig, emergency key recovery and seedless key recovery; the only thing separating the gold membership from silver is that it comes with a Trezor One and a Casa node. The platinum comes with three hardware wallets (customer choice of Trezor or Ledger), a surprise gift, 24/7 customer service and a Casa node, while the diamond also comes with all of this plus an inheritance planning, multi-user transaction signing and not one but two Casa nodes. Speaking of the Casa node, let&rsquo;s talk about it. This plug-and-play hardware is perfect for nontechnical enthusiasts and hodlers who want all the comforts of running a full node without the hassle of bootstrapping it on their own. It comes pre-synced, so you just need to download the blocks that were hashed in the interim between shipping and setup. This greases the block syncing and setup process significantly (it took me only a night&rsquo;s worth of downloading to get the fully-updated ledger on the device). You can manage your node from a webportal, and it also comes with Lightning Network support so that you can run your own Lightning node on top of mainnet. You can get a Casa node for $300 &mdash; a steal when you consider that it comes with a year of multisig key services and a Trezor One (which runs about $76). CoinJoin (Wasabi, Samourai and JoinMarket) If privacy is your MO, Wasabi makes a damn fine wallet. The Tor-compatible software allows users to manage several wallets, generate multiple receiving addresses and integrate hardware wallets with the Coldcard Mark1, Trezor Model T and Ledger Nano S. But those features aren&rsquo;t what make Wasabi special. No, its key feature comes with its coin tumbling service, CoinJoin. The CoinJoin protocol allows users to batch their bitcoin into a bundled transaction to obscure who sent what where (though for this to work effectively, each user needs to send the same amount to make each output fungible). Wasabi claims to have made 35,498 bitcoins fungible since CoinJoin&rsquo;s introduction on August 1, 2018. If you want a mobile version (Wasabi is desktop only), then Samourai is your best option for privacy. Like Wasabi, it is Tor-enabled and recently added a mixing features known as STONEWALLx2 and Stowaway, which make use of Samourai&rsquo;s Cahoots transaction framework. Both features are still in the early stages. Samourai calls them &ldquo;easter eggs&rdquo; in its announcement and makes it clear that they&rsquo;re not as accessible to the casual user. Finally, we would be remiss to not mention Joinmarket, which Samourai so aptly calls &ldquo;the OG in bitcoin privacy.&rdquo; The wallet has been facilitating CoinJoin transactions since 2015. It should also be noted that, with Wasabi, Samourai and Joinmarket&rsquo;s mixing services, no single user can tumble transactions alone (unless they are using multiple wallets), as the obfuscation techniques can only work with multiple transaction outputs. Lolli. In the words of Bitcoin evangelist Matt Odell: &ldquo;Stay humble. Stack sats.&rdquo; Luckily, there&rsquo;s an app for that &mdash; and it&rsquo;s not an exchange. Lolli is a Chrome and Firefox browser plug-in which rewards users with bitcoin for purchases from participating online retailers. This sats-back model is like Ebates for bitcoin; in fact, its founders, Alex Adelman and Matt Senter, drummed up the model while working at Ebates and were looking for a way to lubricate the friction people face when buying into bitcoin. What better way than to reward them in bitcoin for buying things they already want, use and need? With Lolli, you can earn bitcoin back on anything from travel to clothes to groceries and even craft beer memberships. More than 500 merchants have partnered with the service, and Adleman told Bitcoin Magazine that, as they saw at Ebates, rewards programs like these can shape customer loyalty, and that&rsquo;s attractive to Lolli&rsquo;s partners. If a bitcoiner sees that they can receive 5 percent back when renting on VRBO as opposed to Airbnb, well, they&rsquo;re going to take that &mdash; same as if they can earn bitcoin back from Jet for everyday purchases instead of Amazon. Tippin.me. &ldquo;You need a token for that. Bitcoin doesn&rsquo;t scale, bro.&rdquo; Nah. Tippin.me has become a darling of Crypto Twitter for its simple yet engaging use case. Using the Chrome/Firefox browser extension, Twitter users can easily receive or dole out Lightning payments in the form of &ldquo;tips,&rdquo; receiving these in Tippin.me&rsquo;s custodial wallet. The application is a pioneer for giving users on a social media platform as prominent as Twitter the ability to monetize their content or reward other users for content they especially enjoy (Reddit has something similar with a bitcoin tipbot). It played a pivotal role in the passing of the Lightning Torch, giving users an easy, Twitter-endogenous application to take and pass the torch when it was low capacity. Eventually, it caught the attention of Twitter&rsquo;s co-founder, Jack Dorsey, who gave it his stamp of approval. The application, which is over 14,000 users strong, released version 1.0 recently, which added a number of improvements including messaging, sending tips directly from balances and an option to top-off wallet balances from on-chain transactions. Messari. Messari.io is like CoinMarketCap&rsquo;s awesome little brother. We&rsquo;re just so darn proud of it. But seriously, Messari.io was founded in October 2017 to &ldquo;[bring] transparency to the cryptoeconomy.&rdquo; This became evident when it launched its market dashboard with real-time tracking of 600 cryptocurrencies. Its charts include reported volume from exchanges while correcting this volume to more accurately convey real trading volume (for example, at the time of writing, the report volume of the entire market is $50 billion, but Messari lists real volume as just over $2 billion &mdash; a bit of a gap). Alongside this more accurate market volume metric, the service lets you tailor charts for a variety of specific criteria including consensus mechanism, Bitcoin fork and category of asset &mdash; oh, and some colorful criteria including memes, scams and possible scams. The site also aggregates...

Apps, Services and Devices That Put Every Bitcoiner in the Driver’s Seat - Bitcoin Magazine

Adoption - Sats Back: How the Ebates of Bitcoin Plans to Convert Holders to Spenders

CEO Alex Adelman says that while working at Ebates

Sats Back: How the Ebates of Bitcoin Plans to Convert Holders to Spenders - Bitcoin Magazine

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Adoption

Loyalty

Merchants

Rebates

#8220

adelman believes

customer service

democratize commerce

ebates

ebates adelman

“The biggest problem I could think of was distribution. How do you share and educate both consumers and merchants on the power of bitcoin? I learned how much consumers loved earning and why merchants make decisions to adopt new technology.”



Given his experience as an e-commerce professional, Alex Adelman, co-founder and CEO of <a href="https://www.lolli.com/">Lolli</a>, should know. After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2011, the entrepreneur started Cosmic, an e-commerce gateway “with the idea to democratize commerce, allowing anyone to buy anything anywhere,” he told Bitcoin Magazine. The company, after an initial acquisition by PopSugar Inc., would end up in the hands of e-commerce cashback giant Ebates, and Adelman and his CTO, Matt Senter, would stay on staff after the buyout.



Now, the duo are taking their experience working at Ebates and their original dream to “democratize commerce” to a new network of technology and clientele: Bitcoin.



<h4>From Cash Back to Sats Back</h4>



While working at Ebates, Adelman told us that he learned "why people buy, how people use cashback programs" — the hows and whys that would eventually lay the foundation for building Lolli's bitcoin-back platform.



From craft beer memberships to VPNs to clothing, you can shop for just about anything on Lolli, though Adelman says travel is the most popular category (this is perhaps due to the fact that most airline booking sites, like CheapOAir, give a flat rate in bitcoin back rather than a percentage).



Like Ebates’ own model, Lolli’s is simple and enticing: Shop online with Lolli’s participating retailers and earn a variable amount of bitcoin back as a reward. Launched just six months ago, the platform already has 10,000 active users, Adelman told Bitcoin Magazine, and it’s struck up partnerships with retail and online service leaders like Walmart, Overstock and Bookings.com. These are just a few names out of the 500 partners Lolli has brought to the platform as it continues to sprout and grow.



The seeds for the company were sown over five years ago when Adelman was on a trip to New York while he was still building Cosmic. He was couch surfing at the time while navigating the choppy waters of New York’s sea of industry, attempting to form partnerships and secure capital for his first startup.



Adelman said he doesn't like the "Hollywood-ization" of those moments when the entrepreneurial light bulb clicks on and a business idea shines forth. But he also said that, if he could pick a moment when the initial spark for Lolli's conceptualization was kindled, it was one fateful night at a New York bar when he met the soon-to-be co-founder of Blockstack, Ryan Shea.



"A couple of years into [Cosmic], we learned about bitcoin. On a trip to New York, I bumped into Ryan Shea randomly through a friend of a friend at a bar, and he had just learned about bitcoin and he talked my ear off for like three hours. And everything he said resonated with me,” Adelman said.



"Everyone has that friend or that moment. I was obsessed. Everything we were building was on top of fiat rails and all breakages we were seeing were with payments. We were getting taxed by every single one of these layers that has no real purpose or reason."



Still, it would take years of careful deliberation and focus before Adelman and Senter would go full bitcoin with Lolli. Adelman's glad they waited, telling Bitcoin Magazine that he doesn't think they "would have had the same success if we tried to implement it five years ago."



Originally, though, the team wasn't going to build it for Bitcoin. After leaving Ebates, Adelman said that he and Matt toyed with Solidity to see if they could build a DApp for this use case. He was on a bit of an altcoin kick, he admits, and thought that Ethereum might be a good fit for the platform. That was until he took a walk in Washington Square Park with friend and fellow Bitcoiner <a href="https://twitter.com/arjunblj">Arjun Balaji</a>.



"I was talking about some of the stuff we were building in Solidity and he asked pretty bluntly, 'When's the last time you read the Satoshi Whitepaper?' And truthfully, I hadn't read it in a couple years. It's so basic, so I felt like I knew it," he said.



"I read it again, and it hit me like this source of truth. And speaking candidly, I said, ‘What am I doing? Everything's in Bitcoin. That's where it starts.’"



"So I started the concept for this idea that was so simple: Ebates but for bitcoin. Giving people cash back in the form of bitcoin as a way to distribute bitcoin to more people."



Between Adelman's background of marketing Cosmic to retailers over the last seven years and Senter’s developing skills, "all these things beautifully came together, and Matt and I just started building."



Matt hammered out a prototype in "about two weeks," and Adelman began shopping around this beta to some retailers.



<h4>Turning Holders into Spenders</h4>



Today, Lolli continues to grow and, as it grows, Adelman believes that not only will it bring more people into the bitcoin ecosystem to passively earn the cryptocurrency, but it will eventually convert holders into users. Then, the companies that participate in the sats-back program will be incentivized to accept bitcoin as more users leverage the program and show interest in spending their bitcoin on actual services.



"The next stage — these earners are going to become spenders. Once they hold bitcoin, they're going to want to spend it."



For now, though, he says that the retailers are just happy to have the additional coverage. It wasn’t hard to convince them to play ball, he told us, because much like with Ebates, the cost is negligible and can be seen as a marketing expense. Lolli drives users to their sites because, as with its cash-back predecessor, “people are loyal to [the service], not the particular brands.”



After these users purchase goods on these sites, Lolli receives a commission from that purchase and they credit the user’s account with bitcoin that the company buys from “top OTCs,” Adelman said. He emphasized that all user information is anonymized (the retailers don’t see names, only user IDs when someone shops using the service) and that Lolli does not make money by selling data, a misconception that the company has been crusading against online.



When asked whether or not the platform would expand to other cryptos, Adelman said he’s a big believer in free markets, and that people can spend their bitcoin or trade it for other cryptos if they wish. So, for now, he’s loyal to bitcoin, and he would rather focus on enriching the platform’s functionality before adding support for other coins.



In the works, for instance, is a category search function that will allow users to type in the item or services they’re searching for on the site to streamline their search. Until that feature is ready, customers can reach out to Lolli customer support to request an item and they will search for participating retailers to find the best deal for you. Adelman believes that this human factor and customer service will ultimately allow his new company to outcompete the legacy cashback company he came from.



“It’s all about good branding. We want people to associate good customer service with bitcoin. And if we can do that, it’ll mean more people defaulting to Lolli for bitcoin over Ebates in the long run."

CEO Alex Adelman says that while working at Ebates, he learned &quot;why people buy, how people use cashback programs,&quot; &mdash; the hows and whys that would eventually lay the foundation for building Lolli&#039;s bitcoin-back platform.

Sats Back: How the Ebates of Bitcoin Plans to Convert Holders to Spenders

&ldquo;The biggest problem I could think of was distribution. How do you share and educate both consumers and merchants on the power of bitcoin? I learned how much consumers loved earning and why merchants make decisions to adopt new technology.&rdquo; Given his experience as an e-commerce professional, Alex Adelman, co-founder and CEO of Lolli, should know. After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2011, the entrepreneur started Cosmic, an e-commerce gateway &ldquo;with the idea to democratize commerce, allowing anyone to buy anything anywhere,&rdquo; he told Bitcoin Magazine. The company, after an initial acquisition by PopSugar Inc., would end up in the hands of e-commerce cashback giant Ebates, and Adelman and his CTO, Matt Senter, would stay on staff after the buyout. Now, the duo are taking their experience working at Ebates and their original dream to &ldquo;democratize commerce&rdquo; to a new network of technology and clientele: Bitcoin. From Cash Back to Sats Back. While working at Ebates, Adelman told us that he learned &quot;why people buy, how people use cashback programs&quot; &mdash; the hows and whys that would eventually lay the foundation for building Lolli&#039;s bitcoin-back platform. From craft beer memberships to VPNs to clothing, you can shop for just about anything on Lolli, though Adelman says travel is the most popular category (this is perhaps due to the fact that most airline booking sites, like CheapOAir, give a flat rate in bitcoin back rather than a percentage). Like Ebates&rsquo; own model, Lolli&rsquo;s is simple and enticing: Shop online with Lolli&rsquo;s participating retailers and earn a variable amount of bitcoin back as a reward. Launched just six months ago, the platform already has 10,000 active users, Adelman told Bitcoin Magazine, and it&rsquo;s struck up partnerships with retail and online service leaders like Walmart, Overstock and Bookings.com. These are just a few names out of the 500 partners Lolli has brought to the platform as it continues to sprout and grow. The seeds for the company were sown over five years ago when Adelman was on a trip to New York while he was still building Cosmic. He was couch surfing at the time while navigating the choppy waters of New York&rsquo;s sea of industry, attempting to form partnerships and secure capital for his first startup. Adelman said he doesn&#039;t like the &quot;Hollywood-ization&quot; of those moments when the entrepreneurial light bulb clicks on and a business idea shines forth. But he also said that, if he could pick a moment when the initial spark for Lolli&#039;s conceptualization was kindled, it was one fateful night at a New York bar when he met the soon-to-be co-founder of Blockstack, Ryan Shea. &quot;A couple of years into [Cosmic], we learned about bitcoin. On a trip to New York, I bumped into Ryan Shea randomly through a friend of a friend at a bar, and he had just learned about bitcoin and he talked my ear off for like three hours. And everything he said resonated with me,&rdquo; Adelman said. &quot;Everyone has that friend or that moment. I was obsessed. Everything we were building was on top of fiat rails and all breakages we were seeing were with payments. We were getting taxed by every single one of these layers that has no real purpose or reason.&quot; Still, it would take years of careful deliberation and focus before Adelman and Senter would go full bitcoin with Lolli. Adelman&#039;s glad they waited, telling Bitcoin Magazine that he doesn&#039;t think they &quot;would have had the same success if we tried to implement it five years ago.&quot; Originally, though, the team wasn&#039;t going to build it for Bitcoin. After leaving Ebates, Adelman said that he and Matt toyed with Solidity to see if they could build a DApp for this use case. He was on a bit of an altcoin kick, he admits, and thought that Ethereum might be a good fit for the platform. That was until he took a walk in Washington Square Park with friend and fellow Bitcoiner Arjun Balaji. &quot;I was talking about some of the stuff we were building in Solidity and he asked pretty bluntly, &#039;When&#039;s the last time you read the Satoshi Whitepaper?&#039; And truthfully, I hadn&#039;t read it in a couple years. It&#039;s so basic, so I felt like I knew it,&quot; he said. &quot;I read it again, and it hit me like this source of truth. And speaking candidly, I said, &lsquo;What am I doing? Everything&#039;s in Bitcoin. That&#039;s where it starts.&rsquo;&quot; &quot;So I started the concept for this idea that was so simple: Ebates but for bitcoin. Giving people cash back in the form of bitcoin as a way to distribute bitcoin to more people.&quot; Between Adelman&#039;s background of marketing Cosmic to retailers over the last seven years and Senter&rsquo;s developing skills, &quot;all these things beautifully came together, and Matt and I just started building.&quot; Matt hammered out a prototype in &quot;about two weeks,&quot; and Adelman began shopping around this beta to some retailers. Turning Holders into Spenders. Today, Lolli continues to grow and, as it grows, Adelman believes that not only will it bring more people into the bitcoin ecosystem to passively earn the cryptocurrency, but it will eventually convert holders into users. Then, the companies that participate in the sats-back program will be incentivized to accept bitcoin as more users leverage the program and show interest in spending their bitcoin on actual services. &quot;The next stage &mdash; these earners are going to become spenders. Once they hold bitcoin, they&#039;re going to want to spend it.&quot; For now, though, he says that the retailers are just happy to have the additional coverage. It wasn&rsquo;t hard to convince them to play ball, he told us, because much like with Ebates, the cost is negligible and can be seen as a marketing expense. Lolli drives users to their sites because, as with its cash-back predecessor, &ldquo;people are loyal to [the service], not the particular brands.&rdquo; After these users purchase goods on these sites, Lolli receives a commission from that purchase and they credit the user&rsquo;s account with bitcoin that the company buys from &ldquo;top OTCs,&rdquo; Adelman said. He emphasized that all user information is anonymized (the retailers don&rsquo;t see names, only user IDs when someone shops using the service) and that Lolli does not make money by selling data, a misconception that the company has been crusading against online. When asked whether or not the platform would expand to other cryptos, Adelman said he&rsquo;s a big believer in free markets, and that people can spend their bitcoin or trade it for other cryptos if they wish. So, for now, he&rsquo;s loyal to bitcoin, and he would rather focus on enriching the platform&rsquo;s functionality before adding support for other coins. In the works, for instance, is a category search function that will allow users to type in the item or services they&rsquo;re searching for on the site to streamline their search. Until that feature is ready, customers can reach out to Lolli customer support to request an item and they will search for participating retailers to find the best deal for you. Adelman believes that this human factor and customer service will ultimately allow his new company to outcompete the legacy cashback company he came from. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all about good branding. We want people to associate good customer service with bitcoin. And if we can do that, it&rsquo;ll mean more people defaulting to Lolli for bitcoin over Ebates in the long run.&quot;

CEO Alex Adelman says that while working at Ebates, he learned "why people buy, how people use cashback programs," — the hows and whys that would eventually lay the foundation for building Lolli's bitcoin-back platform.

CEO Alex Adelman says that while working at Ebates, he learned &quot;why people buy, how people use cashback programs,&quot; — the hows and whys that would eventually lay the foundation for building Lolli&#039;s bitcoin-back platform.

Sats Back: How the Ebates of Bitcoin Plans to Convert Holders to Spenders - bitcoinmagazine.com

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Lolli

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Apps, Services and Devices That Put Every Bitcoiner in the Driver’s Seat

Sats Back: How the Ebates of Bitcoin Plans to Convert Holders to Spenders