@soonaorlater Matt Senter (my co-founder of Cosmic and now Lolli) and I were frustrated with how difficult it was to share bitcoin with our family and friends. We realized the onramp to bitcoin was quite difficult for most people and the difficulty was inhibiting bitcoin's growth. Cosmic, Matt & I's last company, was acquired by Ebates, the largest cashback rewards site in the US. We loved the cashback model and it's ability to distribute cash and build a strong community. So, we built Lolli, reached out to all our old contacts from Cosmic, and landed 500+ retailers before our launch. :)

@campbellcapital thanks, Sam! We've built these relationships over the last 6 years, largely from Matt (CTO, Co-Founder of Lolli) and I's last company, Cosmic. Retailers pay us a commission when we send shoppers to their sites. We split that commission with our users, sending bitcoin to their Lolli wallet. Most retailers we've spoken with want to get involved in bitcoin but don't want to go through the technical hurdle associated with accepting bitcoin. Lolli makes it easy for the consumer to earn bitcoin and for the retailer to get involved with bitcoin.

@alexadelman Awesome! Thanks for sharing the background (and commission)!

@dstuecken in short, my friends are way smarter than me. :)

A lot of people educated me on the many incredible benefits of a world with bitcoin and other blockchain applications. Reading Digital Gold was a big turning point. Arjun Balaji and Mark Beylin have both been incredibly inspiring and helpful over the years. Also learned a lot by following Andrew Desantis and a few other brilliant people on Twitter.

@brianjckim
1) Design, partnerships, and team experience. We have deep relationships in the retail space and strong technical expertise with commerce, payments, rewards, media, etc.
2) Currently the Lolli wallet is restricted to rewards only, and those are distributed by Lolli, so there are no "live funds" in the wallet you see in your browser. My team and I built Cosmic, a leading e-commerce gateway. We

@calchulus yes! We started with a web extension because 80-85% of all online purchases in the US happen on web. I think it's the best way to distribute the largest amount of bitcoin to a group of people who don't have bitcoin. We have some big plans to move into mobile. Super focused on shopping rewards at the moment but I also see a world where people are rewarded in bitcoin for other things and hope we play a part in building that future. :)

@calchulus great question! we're focused on bitcoin for now but I could see us supporting other cryptocurrencies in the future. It will largely be up to our community to determine what we offer.

@eriktorenberg great question! learned a lot over the years. Lolli is largely inspired by me and my team's work with Cosmic. We learned a lot about what retailers want and more importantly, what consumer want. We took a lot of our learning around consumer behavior in relationship to rewards and realized rewards would be an incredible way to make bitcoin more accessible to all.

@eriktorenberg I think Bitcoin has a distribution problem, largely because of the difficult onramp for consumers. Currently, there are three main ways you can get bitcoin: 1) you can mine bitcoin with a high-end computer, 2) you can buy bitcoin, and 3) you can earn bitcoin. Mining is too hard, expensive, or confusing for the vast majority of people. So most people have to buy bitcoin through an exchange. Setting up an account with an exchange to invest in bitcoin isn’t easy either . A person must complete a multi-day or even multi-week process of verifying identity, going through an extensive background check, linking a bank account, and ultimately investing their hard-earned money in a volatile asset. While investing has historically been the “easiest” way to get bitcoin, it’s still not that easy. And with increasing regulations and compliance, it’s not getting easier anytime soon.

Lolli de-risks bitcoin, educates people about crypto, provides a real use case, simplifies earning, and eliminates fees. I hope that it's able to answer a lot of people's concerns about adopting bitcoin.

@evabeylin great question! Focused on bitcoin for now but we are going to leave it up to our community to decide what cryptocurrencies they want to earn.