Coin founders Damon Nam and Byron Levels had initially set out to solve a personal problem: their passion for the potential of blockchain was met with an equal frustration for current solutions with high friction, extreme complexity, and poor user experiences.
Investigating this problem further, Nam and Levels decided to poll consumers about the core principles surrounding blockchain, finance, and trust. Upon surveying average consumers, they quickly noticed a few interesting themes…
“Most consumers do not understand fiat money, let alone blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Many of them do not even trust themselves with a password, much less a private key. These same consumers prefer to work with reputable centralized third-parties versus trusting themselves to manage the custody of their assets. We found that simplicity is underrated and trumps all product features, bells, and whistles that are difficult to use.”
Damon Nam, Coin Founder and CEO
This feedback led Nam and Levels on a journey to create the world’s first financial assistant for digital assets. A seamless experience that allows users to easily manage all of their digital assets with instant text and voice messaging.
The process is really quite simple. The user opens Coin and is quickly introduced to Aidan (Artificially Intelligent Digital Assets Ninja), a personalized AI-assistant who can field all questions and concerns about digital assets. Aidan helps set up a personal account and within 90 seconds the user can buy, manage, and exchange digital assets with ease.
Aidan has both text and voice-chat capabilities, allowing the user to check prices, make trades, or send assets directly to other friends on Coin by using their name or username. This eliminates the need for long hex wallet addresses and makes sending funds to the wrong recipient a thing of the past. The most beautiful part, sending assets, is as simple as sending money through Venmo.
For example: “send $55 BTC to @janedoe” will prompt a quick confirmation. Click ‘confirm’ and the transfer is immediately initiated to your friend, Jane Doe. This seamless process requires no wallet addresses, elaborate public keys, or complicated passwords, and is done in a matter of seconds.
Over time, AIDAN learns user preferences and behavior to create a personalized experience for each individual user, making interactions increasingly more valuable. AIDAN can provide education to aid with financial literacy, suggest financial recommendations, proactively alert users of breaking news relevant to one’s digital holdings, and more. Without requiring much interaction from a user, the Coin Assistant creates an experience that is proactive, prescriptive, and personalized.
The two co-founders of Coin have a combined 24 years of experience working at Microsoft. This has given them an upper hand in understanding the technical barriers of how to make cutting-edge applications user-friendly.
Byron and Levels found further support in the Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator, an intensive SCET program in which the Cal entrepreneurship ecosystem helps to propel blockchain projects to success.
The team just recently launched their official Beta version of the Coin Assistant at the annual San Francisco Blockchain Week, where startups, enterprise companies, academics, and investors come together to define the future of blockchain & cryptocurrency.
Try out Coin Assistant for yourself by visiting the coin.xyz website today.