Alex Agut: Bitcoin should be a great user experience

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HandCash has been one of the pioneers of making Bitcoin easier to send and receive, and has been focused on that goal from the very start. Alex Agut, CEO of the company, revealed to our Becky Liggero at CoinGeek Toronto 2019 that the specific focus of making Bitcoin simpler to use was a big inspiration towards the creation of Paymail.

As it turns out, the core idea of how the HandCash wallet works helped inspire what Paymail would become. “Paymail was basically creating the handle system that we have in HandCash, but for everybody,” he said. “We all have this idea in our brains for a while, and it turns out that one of nChain’s employees Andy is an awesome guy. He already had a working prototype of this, exactly the way we all thought about how to implement it, so we said let’s just use it. And it was great because we wanted interoperability.”

That core idea came from the Bitcoin Association Wallet Workshop, and Agut believes the next such meeting of the minds will do something similarly great. “I think it’s something that we all share in common, because if we want Bitcoin to be a great user experience, it has to be across all services and apps,” he explained. “So next workshop, we might start talking about the twelve word system, it’s a mess, so maybe we can address that in the next workshop.”

What makes those wallet workshops possible is the lack of strife in the Bitcoin SV (BSV) world, as the agreement to stick to one protocol has removed a primary driver of Bitcoin drama. “First I want to say that it’s very nice that we are seen as the anti-crypto,” he said, referring to this phenomena. “I think it’s a nice expression. I think this is the biggest CoinGeek conference yet. So full of people and every time, what I’m seeing is that for every new CoinGeek conference, companies are way more professional and they are bringing real value to the world. It’s not just hobby projects or overrated hobby projects. This is very serious businesses, and the best thing I think since the fork is that nobody is talking about the protocol anymore.”

What draws these companies in is a sense of respect from the core development team, as BSV treats all stakeholders with value. “We just assume that Bitcoin SV is the only blockchain that is treating the miners with respect,” Agut said. “And that’s very important for the future of Bitcoin because why are you trying to hurt the people that are investing into creating this network. Doesn’t make any sense and Bitcoin SV is the only blockchain that gets it.”

Watch Alex Agut’s presentation at the CoinGeek Toronto 2019: