I am curious...
Which do you see sticking around? Fading away?
From a design perspective or something else, what about a particular Bitcoin company's brand draws you to it?
This is just the Lightning ecosystem (def outdated), but you get the idea. Any Bitcoin company works.
Stacker News?? Imo, a beautiful blend of HN nostalgia, and futurism thanks to LN. The Lightning font, zaps, general detailing does something to my brain to make SN feel fresh and fast. Refreshing like a crisp pilsner. While keeping everything else simple and old school, appealing to the fondness many bitcoiners have for money that works the same way. The subtle western lore speaks directly to the bitcoiners who ventured off into the wild and stumbled into this little nook of the internet. The Saloon welcomes newcomers in with open arms.
SN's branding has a lot of character thanks to all these choices. There's a layer of lore that makes for great memes, inside jokes, user incentives, and all the small things that make SN what it is..
What other Bitcoin company do you think is doing branding right?
1244 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b fwd 30 Jan
I think River and Damus and Casa have done a great job of creating a sticky brand for me. What Bitcoin Did is a great brand too. TFTC as well. There are lots of them but those come to mind. Of all personalities, I think Jimmy Song, Lopp, and Lyn have the strongest personal brands.
The main thing is I know what these "brands" stand for, they're consistent, they aren't deeply conflicted in a variety of opaque ventures, and their leaders aren't noisy af about all kinds of tangentially related nonsense nor trying to appeal to everyone (and hide who they are). ie Their identity is strong.
I see a lot of brand potential in:
  • Fountain
    • I associate them with one too many things: Podcasts x Social x Bitcoin
    • It seems like you can cross two things at most and still reliably puncture a psyche
  • Mutiny
    • Still a young company, but they could be seen as the cypherpunks of lightning through more direct treatment
  • Breez
    • Their brand is strong to me whatever lane they choose, but they are changing lanes right now
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795 sats \ 1 reply \ @NOV 30 Jan
Strike, River, and Unchained seem to have branding that matches the Bitcoin ethos well. It is interesting to see how bitcoin-only companies align with and differ from non-bitcoin company’s marketing strategies.
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I love that Strike as a company matches Jack's IDGAF energy
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Great question. My opinions have changed recently. For example, when it comes to exchanges, River is the only brand I really respect right now. Hardware wallets? Coinkite.
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The batch of "respectable" bitcoin companies does always tend to shrink doesnt it over time...2022/23 was very revealing for who the real ones are
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44 sats \ 0 replies \ @343pg 31 Jan
Coinkite for sure. Great brand
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219 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr 30 Jan
i agree with most of the other comments, but i’ll add one more to the mix.
lightspark has a beautifully polished site and all their releases make a lot of noise.
if i were to draw early comparisons, lightspark reminds me of a cross between the branding strategy of stripe and tesla.
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wow looks very beautiful
kinda reminds me of Strike's but with some more color
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Zebedee. Its wallet is non-custodial but it:
  • has a variety of games that reward newcomers with sats fairly easily
  • has tie-ups with Slice, thus entrenching itself with an ecosystem
  • provides an email address that makes it convenient for people to use it as a burner account
  • makes it easy for users to buy gift cards from Bitrefill, which may be what newcomers care about - how to spend
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i am curious where they got their name from haha
will be interesting to see how companies like zbd onboard younger generations..
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I think I read somewhere as a name it means ‘gift of God’ - which seems a touch pretentious.
Or perhaps it’s inspired by the terrifying spring-legged wizard from children’s tv show ‘The Magic Roundabout’ with his catch phrase “Time for bed!” - (WTF!!)
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lol both origins are so different from each other haha
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Even this Gen X got onboarded because I wanted to play Solitaire for a few sats haha
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ZEBEDEE is noncustodial?
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Alas! Thanks for catching my error!
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You’re welcome!
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135 sats \ 1 reply \ @dgy 30 Jan
  • Coinkite (Coldcard hardware wallet)
  • Acinq (Phoenix Wallet)
  • Lightning Labs (LND)
  • Blockstream (Green Wallet, CLN, Liquid)
  • Boltz (Atomic Swaps)
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TIL about Phoenix's parent company, had not known about Acinq until now..
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Zeus has a strong and charmy brand one of the bests to my opinion. Fountain is doing very well, you can see an evolution. Current has a nice brand too but they still need to improve some troubles.
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Are you going to ask about the worst brands in Bitcoin tomorrow?
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would be a bit boring wouldnt it
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Not necessarily. There is a lot that can be learned from failures
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  1. Darthcoin 😁
  2. SEEDSIGNER
  3. COLDCARD
  4. BLOCKSTREAM
  5. Swan
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65 sats \ 0 replies \ @NOV 31 Jan
One of these things in not like the other🎶
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85 sats \ 1 reply \ @davidw 30 Jan
BTCPay is everything Bitcoin stands for, but branding is perhaps not as strong as some of the other alternative solutions out there. Would love to see them close that gap somehow.
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feel the same way..feels a bit dated imo for tech thats "with the times"
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43 sats \ 0 replies \ @Gian 30 Jan
Boltz
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SN is the abbreviation for Stacker.news .. and Satoshi Nakamoto. Coincidence? I think not.
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@k00b really was thinking of all the details...
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That was a coincidence actually. I didn't realize it myself until after SN launched.
It's a lesson in luck for me: the more action you take, the more likely you are to be subject to luck.
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Have you seen the "luck surface area" construction? It's one of the things that seems Deeply True to me.
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Yes! I think I originally encountered it in Luck and the Entrepreneur: The four kinds of luck from Marc Andreesen.
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55 sats \ 2 replies \ @KLT 31 Jan
Given their history, I see Block / Cashapp sticking around for a long time. Any company that’s offering custodial lightning solutions that want to do right by their users and not rug pull will stick around.
It’s hard regarding hardware wallet companies because so much will change technically, as well as our requirements for storing our seed, but I do see coinkite sticking around.
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Good observation, there will be nuance between different niches. Hardware wallets feel pretty pvp right now but im wondering if/when the apple/android of the industry appear and take hold of most the market
Or if the market will naturally develop like bitcoin. Distributed, many companies, many offerings. I hope for this option
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @KLT 31 Jan
I think it’s your 2nd option. No doubt apple and google will eventually get in the game. But I try to look at everything through a global lens and the billions of people outside of the 330 million or so in the US tells me that there will be many companies, many offerings, fighting for our business and if they play fiat games, they’ll just go away. It’ll be very competitive so I feel like the need to do right by their customers in order to make more bitcoin will have a positive effect.
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Yeah you can pay people using bitcoin but the UX is terrible so no one does it
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I didn't know they had that feature. I've never used Twitter.
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Yeah I didn’t a few times but it failed more than it worked. It’s not as a easy as zapping is on here or on damus
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Cash App
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The pic is missing Binance. You can deposit with lightening on Binance.
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