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Proving that custodial, centralized, altcoin casinos are not the lone mode to win successful this industry, the privacy-focused bitcoin speech Bull Bitcoin precocious went multinational, bootstrapping a squad successful France and expanding its services to the whole eurozone. The determination comes lone a twelvemonth aft announcing their enlargement into Costa Rica.
“Bull Bitcoin is astir apt the longest-running Bitcoin-only, self-custodial exchange,” Theo Mogenet, Europe General Manager for Bull Bitcoin, told Bitcoin Magazine successful an interview.
”When you bargain Bitcoin from us, it goes consecutive to your wallet, we ne'er clasp lawsuit funds—and it reflects Francis’s imaginativeness of privateness and the cypherpunk ethos.”
https://x.com/Bull Bitcoin_/status/1881371651251769619
Founded successful Montreal, Canada, successful 2013, Bull Bitcoin’s superior assertion to fame is its noncustodial speech model. Rather than instrumentality your fiat and recognition a bitcoin equilibrium to your relationship connected their books, Bull Bitcoin forces users to input a Bitcoin nationalist code earlier purchase. This ensures that erstwhile fiat lands connected their account, they tin rapidly wage retired the bitcoin to the user’s wallet of choice.
They’ve besides been aboriginal and progressive supporters of the Lightning Network and Liquid Network, and person adjacent integrated PayJoin into their platform, each of which connection important privateness benefits to their users.
Finally, they person developed a enactment of products focused not connected trading and speculation but connected utilizing bitcoin arsenic money.
Bull Bitcoin enables users to wage their monthly bills with bitcoin specified arsenic rent, electricity, information plans, and arsenic of precocious adjacent bargain existent estate. They besides person a Bitcoin wallet app that is inactive successful its aboriginal stages, but is rapidly gathering a beardown database of features.
One subtle but almighty quality betwixt Bull Bitcoin and astir different exchanges is their bitcoin-only stance, which rejects selling altcoins that are the breadstuff and food of astir exchanges — monetizing the speculative fervor of the crypto markets.
Bull Bitcoin ignores the full crypto market, focusing lone connected bitcoin, which allows it to deploy cutting-edge technologies earlier galore of its competitors. The squad astatine Bull Bitcoin thereby doesn’t tally the compliance hazard oregon transportation method indebtedness that comes people with supporting hundreds of antithetic altcoins.
The effect is simply a profitable institution with a thin and mean squad that has present gone international.
Privacy is Not a Crime
The last portion to Bull Bitcoin’s occurrence mightiness beryllium its founding story. Started by French-Canadian entrepreneur and Bitcoin Maximalist Francis Pouliot, the institution has been wholly self-funded, receiving nary VC wealth truthful far.
While sticking to the aboriginal cypherpunk imaginativeness of bitcoin arsenic sovereign wealth could not person been easy, it has enabled the institution to marque decisions and employment strategies that different exchanges often avoid. 
Now, they are entering the EU successful an epoch wherever galore different cryptocurrency businesses are exiting the union. Companies similar Deribit near Europe years ago and adjacent giants similar Tether are being squeezed retired from the European Union owed to regulatory pressure. Bull Bitcoin has alternatively dove in, seeing an accidental to scope an underserved market.
On the compliance front, Bull Bitcoin has taken a precise antithetic attack than different marketplace participants. Rather than over-comply retired of an abundance of caution arsenic seen with galore crypto exchanges, they person stuck to the missive of the law, and looked for ways to support their users from overzealous regulators oregon politicians.
“We person a batch of acquisition dealing with the government. We travel from Canada truthful we are utilized to authorities oversight. The compliance load of the European Union, though overmuch higher than Canada, doesn’t scare us,” Francis Pouliot told Bitcoin Magazine.
Theo Mogenet added:
“We person definite obligations successful presumption of warring wealth laundering — that we cannot truly circumvent. But arsenic you mentioned, when, for example, a government, beryllium it successful Canada oregon present successful Europe, volition inquire for a bulk of transactions without immoderate judicial mandate, without immoderate ineligible ground to bash so, our argumentation is conscionable to combat backmost and marque definite that we tin usage each portion of authorities that is retired determination — to fundamentally propulsion backmost connected the government’s demand.”
Expansion into Costa Rica
Bull Bitcoin’s enlargement is not constricted to Canada and Europe. In caller years, Bull Bitcoin started making inroads into Costa Rica, marking their entranceway into Latin American markets, an ecosystem often driven by peer-to-peer payments and low-tech infrastructure.
Becoming the archetypal “Bitcoin speech successful the country,” it rapidly integrated with the precise fashionable mobile substance payments work SINPE Móvil, allowing users to commercialized sats for fiat rapidly and successful a mode the section colonisation was acquainted with.
The effect seems to person been a speedy enlargement of adoption among farmers markets and different nutrient retailers, which often diagnostic videos from Francis and the team, enjoying the Central-American weather.
The determination to Costa Rica was famously driven by an flight from the Covid restrictions successful Canada, which Francis protested and opposed.
Bull Bitcoin soon partnered with the Bitcoin Jungle, an unfastened root grassroots effort akin to the Bitcoin Beach assemblage successful El Salvador, which maps and educates Costa Rican locals connected however to payment from bitcoin and leverage it arsenic a wealth and ecosystem.
The Burdens of Self-Custody
Bull Bitcoin’s committedness to cypherpunk values has not travel without challenges. Self-custody successful particular, portion removing a large load from the institution successful presumption of compliance and information risk, demands a much educated idiosyncratic basal and precise responsive enactment team.
Boasting a self-hosted “simple chat system” for lawsuit enactment that adjacent Francis himself volition astatine times run, the attack allows users accelerated and reliable entree to a savvy Bitcoiner who tin springiness them a speedy turnaround, without relying connected 3rd enactment platforms.
“In our case, it’s a self-hosted imperishable chat. So it’s moving connected our servers. Like nary lawsuit information is shared with extracurricular parties. And you volition fundamentally chat with a human, usually like, for example, successful Europe, it would often beryllium maine oregon Jimmy oregon lawsuit enactment officer. Sometimes it’s adjacent Francis that is answering to clients,” said Theo Mogenet astir their lawsuit enactment process.
They person processes designed to assistance forestall users from getting scammed arsenic well, going arsenic acold arsenic to calling their users erstwhile they are successful a lawsuit enactment track.
“We tin besides person similar a 10-, 15-minute speech with them to marque definite that they cognize what a Bitcoin wallet is, what the risks with self-custody are to beryllium definite that they are not pressured oregon pushed by idiosyncratic to bash that,” Theo explained connected the podcast.
Phishing scams are a communal contented for Bitcoin and crypto exchanges, and naive users get talked into buying crypto to nonstop to scammers, successful bid to relieve unit from assorted lies oregon unit tactics.
Besides their progressive enactment team, in 2022 Bull Bitcoin acquired Veriphi, a “white mitt work supplier for Bitcoin aforesaid custody”. The steadfast had heavy roots successful the Bitcoin Quebec country and developed a batch of acquisition with precocious self-custody consulting.
Today, this work is integrated into their merchandise enactment with a dedicated website astatine bitcoinsupport.com, offering users a scope of consulting and acquisition packages to determination them on the travel into bitcoin self-custody with due guidance.
Self-Hosted Infrastructure: The Fork War
The absorption connected self-hosted infrastructure did not travel from a spot of ideology alone, but was a hard-earned acquisition from the 2017 Bitcoin fork war—the interior struggle wrong the Bitcoin manufacture astir what way Bitcoin scaling improvement should instrumentality and who got to determine this.
In a 2017 speech, for example, Francis Pouliot explained the dilemmas the Bitcoin assemblage faced astatine the time, the crippled mentation of economical nodes, and the thesis of Bitcoin statement that yet emerged victorious.
Faced with a faction of the Bitcoin assemblage called Bitcoin Unlimited that wished to standard Bitcoin by expanding the artifact size—a method enactment rejected by Bitcoin Core developers astatine the time—Francis Pouliot and the Bull Bitcoin squad led an effort to amended and rally Canadian Bitcoin businesses against the projected hard fork, arsenic seen successful this letter of intent from 2017 signed by 16 Canadian businesses.
Bull Bitcoin besides began gathering Cyphernode, a “modular Bitcoin full-node microservices API server architecture and utilities toolkit to physique scalable, secure, and featureful apps and services without trusted 3rd parties.”
This bundle suite, launched arsenic open-source bundle a twelvemonth later, allowed Bull Bitcoin and associated companies to instrumentality a basal successful that schism with bundle they had afloat power over, enabling them to take which mentation of Bitcoin to awesome enactment for and which mentation of Bitcoin to travel successful the lawsuit of a contentious bifurcation of the network.
That bundle independency would beryllium utile against different beforehand successful this civilization war: a firm confederation of mining pools, information work providers, and exchanges that would soon articulation the fray and prosecute a antithetic statement alteration to the Bitcoin protocol, known arsenic the NY Agreement, which supported a mentation of Bitcoin called SegWit2x.
The mighty firm confederation included giants specified arsenic Blockchain.com, Coinbase, and 50 others, including mining pools that connected insubstantial had much than 80% of hashing power down them, yet besides challenged developer and assemblage consensus.
Both Bitcoin Unlimited and the NY Agreement conjugation would extremity up losing this fork warfare to assemblage and developer consensus, who utilized tools akin to Cyphernode (UASF) and stood down the backwards-compatible SegWit brushed fork, a scaling solution for Bitcoin that maintained statement with older versions of Bitcoin and would yet beryllium victorious.
Bull Bitcoin’s relation successful defending the decentralization of Bitcoin successful 2017, alongside their alignment with cypherpunk values for implicit a decade, places them comfortably arsenic legends successful the annals of Bitcoin history.
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