“Let’s just build it ourselves”

This should be the answer anytime you don’t find what you are looking for in the Bitcoin space. And this was exactly our reaction when we didn’t find an easy Bitcoin app that would enable normies (like your cousin or grandma) to buy, sell, send, receive, and store BTC.

On one hand, we wanted to have an easier way to handle our bitcoins ourselves. I always hated the process of getting onboarded to an exchange, getting verified, depositing money, manually buying bitcoin, only to then withdraw it again to my personal wallet. I also wanted to set up my auto weekly savings plan, which wasn’t possible at the time (@GetBittr by @watermaniak didn’t exist yet back then, and it doesn’t anymore now, RIP).

On the other hand, we wanted to have something to refer newcomers to. Every Bitcoiner knows this question: “Hey, you know about this stuff. Where can I buy bitcoin? Like quick & easy, without all the complicated stuff.” And for a long time, there was no easy-enough solution you could point regular people to without spending hours for explanations.

So, when I expressed my frustration about the lack of this particular tool in the Bitcoin Association Switzerland Telegram group, I had some people coming back to me saying those 5 (or 6) magic words: “Let’s just build it ourselves”.

Land of Opportunity

Especially in the still young and nascent Bitcoin economy, there is still a lot to build!  

I’m pretty sure it felt the same way when Columbus first discovered America. Setting foot on a completely new and unexplored land after a long and exhausting trip over the ocean fills you with a lot of hope, excitement, and drive for action.

“But there’s no house we can live in, no school for our kids, no pub to have a drink!” the sailors must have moaned.

And what did Columbus respond? 

“Let’s just build it ourselves”.

Nakamoto was for Bitcoin what Columbus was for America. He discovered the holy land, which opened a plethora of opportunities and unlocked a shitload of potential for all of us to dig into. He gave us the basic component to build a new and better financial system on top.

Now, in order to help building and making this vision a reality, the only things you need are some passion for Bitcoin and some entrepreneurial spirit. That’s it. No special skills required. No previous experience. No formal education. No money.

I started Relai with literally nothing but those two things. I had no idea how to build an app. Or a company. And no money to hire experts. But I knew that there was a problem, and that a solution to this problem could potentially be valuable to many people.

Community 

The great thing about the Bitcoin community, and the reason why everyone, including you, can start a Bitcoin startup from scratch, is that everyone is in it for the same revolutionary vision. We all have the same long-term goal of making Bitcoin great, so everyone tries to help each other and promote each other’s endeavors.

Never had I imagined that our project gets such a staggering support from the Bitcoin community. We just launched a simple Bitcoin investing app, yet within 3 months it got downloaded over 2’000 times in 20 different countries and we sold more than 50 bitcoins (500’000 EUR). And all this with no marketing budget (we didn’t even pay ourselves salaries). What pushed us hard was all the Bitcoin freaks tweeting about us and referring the app to all their friends & families.

Even before we launched, in the testing phase, the community was helping us, testing the app, giving feedback and spreading the word about our project. It was at that time the famous & notorious Bitcoin Maximalist Giacomo Zucco found out about us, and after a couple of messages via Telegram he decided to become an Angel Investor.

Make use of this huge community power for your own idea and contribute to making Bitcoin successful. I can only encourage all of you Bitcoin rebels who are caught in a nine-to-five job, wasting your potential on some boring corporate work, to go out and look for things you currently miss in the Bitcoin economy.

Find some community support for it and scream “Let’s just build it ourselves”!