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Blockchain-based fintech startup Crypterium challenges classic banks by introducing a new feature that allows its users to transfer any amount of cryptocurrency using not the complicated wallet addresses, but simply the recipient phone number. Those transfers happen simultaneously, and the company claims it can process up to a million transactions per second, solving blockchain’s scalability issue.
Does it mean the first truly user-friendly crypto solution has arrived, and we’re witnessing the Netscape moment for the whole industry? Marc O’Brien, who has held the position of CEO of Visa UK for six years, to then become a key advisor to Revolut, Britain’s first digital bank unicorn, bets on the house that it did.
Going Mainstream
Almost all blockchain applications are not user-friendly. Tech-savvy people have created them for other tech-savvy people, and those solutions are still very confusing for both businesses and consumers who are not as computer literate.
Former Visa UK CEO Marc O’Brien has set a goal of bringing the crypto industry mainstream and making it more user-friendly. “We’re on our way to the 21st century’s “Netscape moment”, the day when a California startup’s eye-popping market debut illuminated the World Wide Web for millions of people, otherwise only vaguely familiar with its potential and promise,” – he explains, mentioning that his own startup, Crypterium, “makes buying, selling and spending of cryptocurrency in everyday life as easy as possible, and that’s what will bring the next billions of people to using crypto.”
Problems unsolved
There are two key problems all crypto holders are facing today while trying to transfer coins and tokens to each other. First of all, you can get confused with the wallet address. This is how they look like – 0xc5b133a52145990313915612bd732f059330287f – so getting confused is really easy. And once you do, you never get your money back.
There are also special hacker apps, such as CryptoShuffler, that change the address of the wallet while it is being copied. So in the “Send to the wallet” field, you enter the thief’s wallet number.
The second problem is that any transaction takes a while. If we are talking about Ethereum, it could be minutes, if it is Bitcoin – a transaction may take hours. When the blockchain networks are overloaded, transactions may take days.
The solution is on its way
Crypterium is aiming to solve both problems. There is no need to copy the recipient’s wallet address. You just need to know his or her phone number. Send crypto to your mom, your friend, your ex-girlfriend in France. They will get money even if they don’t have any crypto wallets. Once the transaction is processed, they’ll get an SMS with a link to get their crypto with some very clear instructions on what they can do with it. For example, they can use their newly acquired Bitcoin to top up their mobile phones.
What is even more great, the transaction of any cryptocurrency takes seconds. This has become possible because all transfers are done off-chain. When the user wants to spend the coins externally, the money is withdrawn from the sender’s wallet inside Crypterium. While not spent, all the transactions are written in the system, make the transfer the fastest of all.
“We have analyzed the most popular crypto wallets in the market, and none of them offer anything like it, though it sounds so exciting,” O’Brien says.
Time will tell if crypto transactions will become more popular than the payments with Visa and Mastercard, but this solution is for sure one big step towards global crypto popularization.
