Coinos.io AMA with Adam and Cole \ stacker news ~AMA

14.2k sats \ 71 comments \ @adam_coinos_io 11 Sep AMA

Coinos is a longstanding open source web wallet with on-chain, Liquid and Lightning capability. We recently added cashu ecash support and are in the midst of adding self-custodial accounts and nostr integration for contacts and messaging.

We host regular in-person meetups in Vancouver are active promoters of Bitcoin merchant adoption with over 500 businesses using us to take in-person payments around the world.

Adam is the founder and CTO and Cole focuses on business development and marketing.

Find us on nostr at

Ask us anything!

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261 sats \ 4 replies \ @grayruby 11 Sep

Does the wallet allow for on chain/lightning and vice versa swaps?

125 sats \ 3 replies \ @adam_coinos_io OP 11 Sep

Yes we charge a 0.1% fee to go between on-chain/lightning/liquid

The swap happens automatically when you go to send a payment so you can deposit into your account on-chain for example and then paste in a lightning invoice or address to send to and it'll just work.

21 sats \ 2 replies \ @grayruby 11 Sep

That's great. Was using Breez for this but having some problems lately when I send onchain to the Breez wallet and the transactions failing to swap sats into lightning. Then I get a refund after 288 confirmations.

50 sats \ 1 reply \ @roy 12 Sep

We've identified and fixed the issue that caused the failed swap.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 12 Sep

Awesome. Good to hear.

221 sats \ 2 replies \ @TheMorningStar 11 Sep

Why do you personally think that CoinOs is better than other LN wallets?

26 sats \ 1 reply \ @a864f571e8 11 Sep

We think Coinos is better than other LN wallets because Coinos has the lowest fees in the world with only a 0.1% conversion fee, which is what you get charged when you withdraw from Coinos to an external Bitcoin onchain or Liquid wallet. Some competitors are 0.5% or more. Also our interface/user-experience is the easiest in the whole market.

If businesses use us, we give them free marketing/promo online which brings them more sales/attention to their business. Competitors don't do that for businesses who use them. It really helps when we do this.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @duuv 12 Sep

Does this promotion apply to all bussinesses or only in Vancouver?

110 sats \ 1 reply \ @03a5308755 11 Sep

Do you think you can stay kyc free in the future? Are you just flying under the radar serving US customers? Appreciate the cypherpunkness.

Do you have a warrant canary?

Do you intend to run the cashu mint long term or is it just experimental?

Ever thought about doing a fedimint federation, together with other well known custodians/bitcoiners?

154 sats \ 0 replies \ @adam_coinos_io OP 11 Sep

I think we're flying under the radar for now. Our plan is to eventually transition to being a self-custodial wallet once we feel that we can achieve that while preserving the dead-simple UX we have now.

No we don't have a warrant canary.

Yes the plan is to run it long term unless we get forced to shut it down. Hopefully by then there will be other anonymous yet still trustworthy mints on tor that we can redirect our users to.

Yes we looked at fedimint but the setup was a little more complex than Cashu so we opted to keep it simple for now.

320 sats \ 2 replies \ @Coinsreporter 11 Sep

Do you plan to run any campaign for merchant adoption of coins? Or, you already have something running for them?

54 sats \ 0 replies \ @adam_coinos_io OP 11 Sep

We're running a local campaign in Vancouver offering 1M sats to people who refer on certain types of businesses that we wanted to see: https://coinos.io/bounties

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @a864f571e8 11 Sep freebie

Good question! Yes! We post promo videos on our social media pages about the new merchants that have come on board with accepting Bitcoin through us such as the 1st Gas Station & Liquorstore to come on board in Canada 🇨🇦 We also host 8 meetups per month in Vancouver, BC, Canada where we spread the word about Bitcoin merchant adoption which increases the amount of people spending their Bitcoin. Our goal is to continue to do that, and also open to suggestions how to market things bigger and better.

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @Golu 12 Sep

How do you tell people that Coinos is safest wallet there?

94 sats \ 2 replies \ @adam_coinos_io OP 11 Sep

Thanks for the great questions everyone! I'm off for now but will check in again later in case there are any more

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Bell_curve 11 Sep

Thanks for participating!

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @a864f571e8 11 Sep freebie

I'm still here for a little bit!

Cole

121 sats \ 2 replies \ @Alby 12 Sep

Do you plan to add Nostr Wallet Connect integration... and when? ;)

121 sats \ 1 reply \ @adam_coinos_io OP 12 Sep

Yes! In two weeks (tm)!

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Alby 13 Sep

Can't wait! Let us know if you need any help!

Other NWC devs nag out at https://discord.nwc.dev

121 sats \ 5 replies \ @Wumbo 11 Sep

Is there a way to default monetary unit to Sats?

I have to keep switching from USD to Sats on each invoice.

If this not a current permanent setting, I would appreciate it if it can be added.

64 sats \ 4 replies \ @adam_coinos_io OP 11 Sep

Good suggestion, I'll get that fixed for you

121 sats \ 3 replies \ @Wumbo 11 Sep

Keep up the good work.

Coinos, is currently my go to wallet to onboard new users in a hurry.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @a864f571e8 11 Sep

That's great to hear! We really appreciate that! If you know of anyone who owns a business (physical location or online), we would love to talk to them and show them how easy it is to accept Bitcoin payments. We have businesses of many types & sizes using us!

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Bell_curve 11 Sep

Me too

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @a864f571e8 11 Sep

Thank you!

121 sats \ 2 replies \ @bitalion 11 Sep

I am from Cuba and I would like to know if there is any problem with using your services for online payments and donations? Thank you.

54 sats \ 1 reply \ @adam_coinos_io OP 11 Sep

As of today no I haven't heard of anyone having problems using our service anywhere in the world but I can't promise it will stay that way for the future.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @bitalion 11 Sep

That was my doubt, thanks for your prompt response.

121 sats \ 3 replies \ @anon 11 Sep

How does coins compare to Aqua?

54 sats \ 2 replies \ @adam_coinos_io OP 11 Sep

Kind of similar. We're planning to move to a similar model where your coins will be self-custodied in Liquid or on-chain BTC by default but swaps into or out of lightning will happen automatically as needed, but we're not quite there yet.

Also Aqua is a native mobile app while we're a PWA.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Signal312 14 Sep

Also Aqua is a native mobile app while we're a PWA.

Aqua has an APK available so there's no need to download an app from Google play. Is PWA an improvement over that?

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @adam_coinos_io OP 16 Sep

Not necessarily an improvement, just different

121 sats \ 2 replies \ @benwehrman 11 Sep

I do a lot of traveling, and one of my favorite things to do is befriend farmer's market merchants everywhere I go.

Firstly, would Coinos be a good option for me to pitch to these (very) small business owners?

And secondly, I may have overlooked it on your site, but what's the status on what states/countries can use this wallet to start accepting bitcoin?

54 sats \ 0 replies \ @adam_coinos_io OP 11 Sep

Oh and for the states/countries we're available anywhere where there's internet.

54 sats \ 0 replies \ @adam_coinos_io OP 11 Sep

Yeah we're a great option for small business owners. Every merchant account comes with a public URL like https://coinos.io/laughingbean for example so you can just make an account for them with their logo and banner image and then print off a QR linking people to it. If they just display that QR at their stall or by the cash register, bitcoiners can push payments to them without the merchant having to do anything.

121 sats \ 1 reply \ @benwehrman 11 Sep

I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to differentiating between the different "wallets for businesses"

What's the TLDR on what sets yours apart from the pack?

64 sats \ 0 replies \ @adam_coinos_io OP 11 Sep

We're super easy to get started with because we don't require any information beyond a username and password to register. Our UI is clean and user friendly for normies.

We provide a simple payments report that tracks the value of BTC at the time of each sale and shows everything to the merchant in terms of their local currency.

We support prompting customers for tips.

We offer businesses free marketing and promotion in person and online and take care of adding them to the btc map and other directories.

We provide many of our merchants with a physical receipt printer that will automatically print a receipt whenever a payment lands in the merchant's account so staff never need to interact with our app on a screen they can just use the receipts for payment confirmation: https://github.com/coinos/coinos-printer

121 sats \ 1 reply \ @benwehrman 11 Sep

You had me at Nostr integration 👀

Could you elaborate a bit more on what the vision is for that?

31 sats \ 0 replies \ @adam_coinos_io OP 11 Sep

We'll start by using nostr for your contacts/follows and allow you to search up other users by their npub or nostr nip05 identifier to be able to zap or DM them.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @bature_ 12 Sep

Awesome!

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 12 Sep

ah damn it, I missed this AMA. Anyways guys, welcome to SN, the stackers knows you quite well, nice service and I love your work for Bitcoin merchants adoption!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @adam_coinos_io OP 12 Sep

Thanks!

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @Solomonsatoshi 12 Sep

Nice easy wallet - great stuff.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @adam_coinos_io OP 12 Sep

Thanks!

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @kdnolan 11 Sep

Love this project!

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @BitcoinIsTheFuture 11 Sep

Lots of wallets out there and I already have a few. What do you see that sets yours apart today and also into the future?

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @adam_coinos_io OP 12 Sep

We're trying to find a good balance between simplicity and functionality. We think we have a good blend of features as a day-to-day spending wallet for individuals or as a merchant wallet.

In the future we'll do our best to make use of different layers and scaling solutions and abstract away the complexity so people can just get down to sending and receiving payments without worrying too much about what's going on under the hood.

100 sats \ 4 replies \ @thebullishbitcoiner 11 Sep

What are the main uses of the Nostr pubkey at the moment?

75 sats \ 3 replies \ @adam_coinos_io OP 11 Sep

We use it for following and messaging other coinos users but the events are only published to our non-public relay so they're not really integrated into the wider nostr ecosystem yet.. that'll be coming soon though.

100 sats \ 2 replies \ @thebullishbitcoiner 11 Sep

Sounds good. I think I’ve heard that it was used to generate (bitcoin?) addresses or something of that sort? I was hoping you could expand on that if true.

42 sats \ 1 reply \ @adam_coinos_io OP 12 Sep

We were planning to use the same bip39 mnemonic seed phrase to derive both your nostr key as well as private keys for a self-custodial bitcoin wallet but we haven't added the self-custodial wallet yet. It's in the works right now.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @thebullishbitcoiner 12 Sep

Bullish. You might be the first to do this. I think I saw someone asking for it the other day if I’m not mistaken.

100 sats \ 2 replies \ @supratic 11 Sep

Any plan to provide a woocommerce payment gateway integration?

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @adam_coinos_io OP 11 Sep

Someone from our community made this: https://github.com/reddatos/coinos-woo

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @supratic 12 Sep

Superb, I gonna check it out! Thank you for all your work and providing a great UX for Bitcoin

100 sats \ 3 replies \ @thebullishbitcoiner 11 Sep

Bullish on the ecash support. Any plans on adding support for P2PK? Or anything else in the pipeline related to Cashu?

53 sats \ 0 replies \ @adam_coinos_io OP 11 Sep

Also yeah planning to become more of a full-fledged cashu client wallet with support for multiple accounts and tokens from other mints so you can use us to manage your cash from other issuers if you want.

42 sats \ 1 reply \ @adam_coinos_io OP 11 Sep

Yeah I was having some shower thoughts on P2PK just the other day and how we could potentially use it to give people coupons that are locked to certain merchant accounts so only redeemable if you go and spend it at certain stores.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @thebullishbitcoiner 11 Sep

Looking forward to seeing all of that. Coupons locked to merchants sounds like a cool use case. 🤙

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @MaxAWebster 11 Sep

Very cool! What's your long term vision for Coinos?

Why did you decide to integrate Cashu? Do you think BTC backed ecash will become the dominant way most people use bitcoin for payments?

I see you're interested in mesh networking - have you thought about (or seen anyone) building a lightning powered demo (ie one where you could charge sats for bandwidth)?

75 sats \ 0 replies \ @adam_coinos_io OP 11 Sep

I want Coinos to be a wallet that abstracts away the complexities of bitcoin and other layers and just gives people a simple wallet for making payments. Beyond that having some social features with nostr would be nice to have.

I think e-cash will help people move between custodians more easily and within the same wallet but hopefully we get to a point where we can achieve the kind of instant finality and zero fees that custodians offer but without any third party trust. I'm optimistic that Ark and improvements to lightning or other layer 2's might get us there one day.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @supratic 12 Sep

What are your plans to skip compliance when it will arrive? Have you guys thought about PMA, Trust o other tools to make your organization/team untouchable no matter what?

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @adam_coinos_io OP 12 Sep

Our ultimate plan is to spread bitcoin adoption, defund the state and create a society where people are free from forced financial surveillance and tyranny.

We'd rather discontinue our custodial services and pivot to just building a fully self-custodial client wallet like Zeus than turn on mandatory KYC for our users.

Coinos is already fully open source so people can self-host it and connect it to their own nodes, other LSP's or e-cash mints.

If we get the hammer maybe someone in a still-free country will pick up the torch and run another public custodial instance like we are now.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @SatsMate 12 Sep

Can I use this wallet around the world? Also what is to prevent a situation like we saw with Mutiny, Wallet of Satoshi or Phoenix? I'm desperately looking for a new wallet, but it seems like they all get run out of town.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 12 Sep

It sounds like you can yes.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @longlifelearner20 11 Sep

i believe you guys are doing great job in introducing bitcoin to other customers globally and to adopt it in merchants so that people would exchange it for products they buy, that will increase in demand for lightning swaps since it is super easy and fast and demand no fees at all. but i was wondering how does this wallet project balance the trade-off between other user experience and security, especially when integrating new features like self-custodial accounts and Nostr messaging? and in what extent it will affect cnvince other people to adopt lightning network and trust it especially when using the wallet to store value? thank you guys :5

31 sats \ 1 reply \ @a864f571e8 11 Sep

Thanks for the question. Since we're currently custodial, we have the auto-withdrawal feature in the settings enabling you to withdraw to your non-custodial wallet of choice when your wallet balance reaches the "threshold" that you set. Adam & I (Cole) educate people about non-custodial and we help people set up their non-custodial wallets when they ask. We don't expect people to hold their Bitcoin on Coinos.

The reason why Coinos is a great option to onboard new users even though it's custodial, is because it's so easy to use and it eliminates a lot of doubt/friction to the skeptic when they see how easy Bitcoin can be to set up and use as every day spending.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @longlifelearner20 11 Sep

oh wow i see, you guys are doing really great job in eduating people about bitcoin especially those who have doubts and bit skeptical about it. thank you for that. and i really admire the feature you have added about giving people control over their funds in other words; giving them choice to switch between coinos and other non custodial wallet, that is a great option. and how much the setup threshold currentley ? will it change in the future?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @02caa8abfd 11 Sep freebie

I think most merchants don’t care about the tech used or what exactly happens in the background they just want to receive payments cheap. Is this also your vision? Do you think coinos wallet offers this today?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @BiTCOINNEWS2030 12 Sep outlawed

stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.