Square Crypto Grant Wants to Help Take Bitcoin Mainstream

Square’s latest grant will help a developer design a Bitcoin wallet that is easy-to-use for crypto newbies.

2 min read

Oct 30, 2020

Payments company Square today announced that it will be giving a grant to a Bitcoin developer who wants to make wallets more user-friendly.

The cryptocurrency arm of Square, Square Crypto, made the announcement on Twitter—shouting out Maggie Valentine, a developer working for blockchain startup, she256.

“Giving trick-or-treaters Open Dimes and Square Crypto grants this year. Speaking of which, this one goes to Maggie Valentine, a designer working to simplify wallet onboarding flows by reducing technical jargon and increasing user education,” the company said via Twitter.

Square Crypto supports the development of the Bitcoin network by giving grants to developers and companies working in the crypto space.

The company wants to give its latest grant to Valentine so she can design a wallet that is easy-to-use for crypto newbies.

According to Valentine’s thesis, people are not using Bitcoin or Bitcoin wallets because they’re too complicated. One thing that puts users off, she says, is the “technical jargon, unfamiliar user concepts”—plus potential users have had “little-to-no education.”

She said: “Unless equipped with a technical background, users are often deterred from reaping the benefits this technology has to offer. To preserve the ethos of this space—an ethos built upon fixing the otherwise broken current financial system—it’s crucial to use design as a vehicle to create better experiences for all types of users.”

Valentine hopes to improve this by looking at how a selection of wallets “present private keys/seed phrases to users by looking at specific copy and onboarding flows.” She will then work to “understand which option might be the ‘best’ for non-crypto-savvy folks”—and design a new wallet.

Square added in its announcement that “difficult wallet UX shouldn't determine who benefits from Bitcoin.”

Payments company Square, owned by Twitter CEO and Bitcoin maximalist Jack Dorsey, is pushing for wider Bitcoin adoption. Just this month, the company announced that it bought $50 million-worth of the cryptocurrency.

Get crypto news straight to your inbox--

sign up for the Decrypt Daily below. (It’s free).

Get Email!

Fifth Circuit Rules OFAC Overstepped in Sanctioning Tornado Cash's Immutable Smart Contracts

The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court ruled Tuesday that the Treasury overstepped by sanctioning Tornado Cash’s immutable smart contracts, stating the autonomous software cannot be classified as property. The Fifth Circuit held that when smart contracts are immutable—meaning no entity can modify or control them—they cannot be classified as "property" subject to sanctions under existing law. The decision reverses a lower court ruling and marks a significant win for privacy advocates and blockchain develop...

Binance Founder Calls Meme Coins ‘Weird’ as Pump.fun Controversy Sizzles

Meme coin mania appears to have swept the masses, but at least one industry stalwart is chaffing under this year’s hype. Meme coins are “getting a little weird now,” former Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said Tuesday on X, adding the crypto community should pivot to building “real applications using blockchain.” Weird, however, is an understatement. The founder's comments form part of a broader online discussion about a controversial trend in recent weeks in which meme coin creators pump their...

BlueSky Sees Surge in New Users and Child Pornography

A surge in new users to social media platform BlueSky has also brought a rise in “harmful content,” leading to a mass moderation campaign to purge images from the network, the platform said on Monday. “We're experiencing a huge influx of users, and with that, a predictable uptick in harmful content posted to the network,” BlueSky’s Safety account said. “As a result, for some very high-severity policy areas like child safety, we recently made some short-term moderation choices to prioritize recal...

News

Courses

Deep Dives

Coins

Videos