Topic: Bridgewalker: euro-denominated wallet for the Bitcoin economy[Now part of Hive!] - page 2. (Read 5381 times)

Very interesting idea. If this actually works with low fees and it's possible to get this to work elsewhere with other currencies than the dollar, it could be a killer app for a lot of things.

The model seems incredibly dangerous because of volatility and slippage.

I've got this installed, put in a small amount of BTC, and all appears good.  I'll be transferring money with someone else tomorrow.

Not sure I follow, can you clarify what you mean exactly? The 1.5 % are in and out, so that already includes using it for something, like let's say shopping at bitcoinstore.com . Or are you talking about turning Bridgewalker-USD into actual bills in your hand? Then yes, that will probably require an extra cash out step somewhere with additional fees. And that's a good point - I personally would consider this an interesting benchmark: Person starts with a $20 bill, turns that into Bitcoin, and a couple of weeks later pays some merchant and the merchant has X amount of USD in his pocket at the end. What is the fee for that complete cycle? If the user keeps bitcoins for the couple of weeks there is pretty much no telling what he ends up with - the market might have moved in his favor or against him. With Bridgewalker that uncertainty is taken out of the equation, for an additional 1.5 %. With fees for acquiring bitcoins and then fees the merchant is paying to convert it back, we probably can not beat credit cards at this point. But I would like to think that we can at some point, if we continue to optimize at all of these points.


I might release the Android client as open source at some point, but the server will probably stay closed source for the foreseeable future.


My thinking exactly! :-) And regarding that: Transfers between Bridgewalker users are instantaneous and free.


It's mostly a question of liquidity. If market spread is very large all of the time, you end up not getting the best price when moving in and out of Bitcoin which can increase that "round trip fee" quite a bit. That's why I started out with Mt.Gox USD market which is quite liquid. I would like to offer a Euro version in the near future.


At the moment your Bridgewalker account will always be denominated in USD, you can not change that. But in theory there could be a separate Euro version of Bridgewalker (and hopefully will be at some point) and then you could definitely exchange money between the two. It would use Bitcoin as the middle man: Bridgewalker-USD -> BTC -> Bridgewalker-EUR.


The Bridgewalker server is currently hosted in Germany.

Only in the Bitcoin world would this:

Turn into this:


LOL!  Everyone is trying to protect the guy for solving a problem... this only happens here.  

If he was working with anything else,  made a computer 20% faster,  made his phone battery last 4 times longer,  if he found a way to convert dollars to gold, he'd be a hero (those Gold ATM's made headlines for months).

Instead he figures a way to convert dollars to bitcoins on the fly,  and the advice is to watch his back because the exchanges are going to shut him down.

This thing is centralized in two places.  Kill the Bridgewalker servers, it dies, kill MtGox, it dies.

And get your server/servers somewhere other than the US...

I advise you to support multiple exchanges as soon as possible.

No.  He solved two problems.

Firstly - it brings complete anonymity to bitcoin.  No bank account required - USD are passed around just like cash.  And no Gox account required either, with all of its registration requirements.  With a burner phone paid for with VISA/Master Gift Cards (a phone with a removable battery), it's untraceable.

Eventually you get out your bitcoin to a fresh wallet - or send USD to someone who will hand you the cash.

Secondly - this is how to get bitcoin into anyone's hands quickly and easily.  Every friend you've got:  "Install Bridgewalker and I'll send you that twenty...".  Or:  "...and I'll pay you for that car".  EU cash restrictions are irrelevant, once this is enabled for Euros.

This is awesome.

I think he did.

You solved the problem

Fascinating.

Now - since you're using Gox...

What about currency conversion?  What if I have two accounts with Gox; one in dollars and one in Francs, and I want to settle up with a Frenchman?  Can I send my dollars to your server and have them come out as Francs on the other person's phone?

When can I do that?

And should it cost any extra, or will there be some kind of conversion vigorish?

Inquiring minds want to know...

EDIT:  Should I even need a Gox account in Francs to send Francs with my dollars?  Shouldn't a proper Bridgewalker/Gox interface be able to take care of that?

EDIT #2:  Euros.  Heh.  Old habits die hard...

This Is exactley what bitcoin needs to go into mainstream. I have been putting steps in place to develop a similar app for Australian users. Bitcoin needs people to be forward thinkers like this to push it along.   

Awesome!  see what is required to register the bitcoin: protocol in AndroidOS.  BitcoinSpinner and the Andreas Wallet both support this, so the client source code should be able to tell you how its done.

This is pay pal without high fees. Very clever.

I was just going to say the same

jav: are you considering to release the source code at some point?

Glad you like it! :-) .. I agree with some of the points you make! Although personally I would rather see something like Bridgewalker becoming obsolete in the long run and - as the Bitcoin economy matures - things moving completely over into BTC. If only for efficiency reasons (avoid constant currency exchange). But at the moment that's simply not practical and probably will not be for quite some time. The popularity of payment processors like BitPay show, that at this point it is necessary to peg prices to USD because there is just too much volatility. And that's fine. This tool aims to bring the same concept to the customer side. Where merchants accept BTC and end up with USD, customers can use Bridgewalker to hold USD and pay in the form of Bitcoin transactions. The important point is, that Bitcoin is the neutral interface between them.


Scanning the QR code works! I support both things like "bitcoin:1asdf?amount=0.123" as well as the "broken" variant with "bitcoin://1asdf"

The URI link does not work at the moment, I haven't looked into where exactly I need to hook into there. But I definitely plan to support that! I'll let you know, when an update is available.


Aw, yes, I should put more details about that on the site. The account is with Bridgewalker and all Bitcoin transactions are going to and from Bridgewalker's Bitcoin daemon. Bridgewalker in turn has then one single account with Mt.Gox and transfers bitcoins between it's own wallet and the account at Mt.Gox to do the trading. The end result is, that most user funds end up in Bridgewalker's Mt.Gox account in the form of USD. So you need to trust that a) Mt.Gox keeps their user accounts safe in general and b) I keep the access to Bridgewalker's Mt.Gox account in particular safe. Only a small amount of funds are in BTC at any time, basically just a small hot wallet to be able to send out transactions quickly.

I'll answer more questions later, as I will be away from the computer for a few hours. Thanks for all the feedback so far!

Payment vehicle rather than speculative instrument this I believe is what btc should be.   

ONLY 1.5% oh boy. Thats only if you never actually use that $ balance...  if you ever actually transfer that in or out of gox to use is the real world, that % is larger than credit cards will ever be.

Super creative idea. I love it.