Wallet Education &Innovation — Ballet
Written by Emoji Nakamoto, Artwork by Indelible Trade
Wallet Education and Innovation: Hodlcast 101
In this new installment of the Hodlcast, Sasha gets in touch with Bobby Lee (no, not the one of Mad TV fame) to discuss his entry onto the wallet market with Ballet. Unlike many user-focused products being sold at the time of writing, Ballet, and by extension, Bobby, are committed to transparency and education for their customers. Their discussion covers the many issues endemic to different types as wallets, as well as the rationale behind Ballet, and who they’re looking to serve.
Bobby discusses the Ballet wallets in terms that people familiar with crypto will understand. They’re essentially high end paper wallets using an open encoding standard for keeping things transparent and safe. Despite paper wallets having some drawbacks compared to more traditional offerings like Trezor, he explains that the burden of knowledge for newcomers is much lower:
“We think for normal people, all the newcomers, they don’t know. They wouldn’t know how to generate the private keys. They wouldn’t know how to store their private keys, they wouldn’t know how to backup their private keys. They wouldn’t know how to use complex software or hardware wallets. But ballet is really, really easy.”
Bobby also discusses his other businesses in the Crypto industry, discussing his experiences in things as disparate as mining and custodial services. After some vetting from Sasha, Bobby also points out another advantage of paper wallets — that they essentially have unlimited lifetime support if they’re made the right way:
“We use an open standard. BIP 38. so this is a non proprietary wallet, meaning that Ballet the company, not only do we not retain your private keys, we don’t even have a proprietary standard on it, meaning that if our company goes out of business, your Bitcoins will still be safe on this wallet. So it’s really easy for new users, 100% cold storage.”
This discussion isn’t just about consumer education, though. Bobby talks about the dangers of exchanges, custodial services, and the Sisyphean nature of running Crypto businesses that rely on institutional trust. He has a few very interesting points to make in these areas, but you’ll have to listen to the full episode to find out what they are.
