Amber. Bitcoin Only
From the beginning until the very end
What started as an idea, more than 3yrs ago now, has turned into a product that thousands of people are using today.
We’ve come a long way, and we have quite the journey ahead of us.
A quick recap so far:
- Early days of its ideation in 2017.
- Forming of the first team in Jan of 2018
- Raising the first bit of capital in March / April 2018
- Building a few initial prototypes and spending lots of time figuring out what the product would actually be, and how it would work
- Changing the name from “Stashh” to “Nibble” to “Kitti” to “Rover” to “Salmon” and finally settling on “Amber” (thank Satoshi)
- Releasing a very rough, “spare change” version into market in late 2018
- Closing our official $1m AUD seed round 2 days before Christmas, 2018
- Cleaning house and restructuring the team on the first day back in 2019
- Throwing out the old product and building Amber from scratch again
- Making our most important hire and launching the first beta of the pure DCA version of Amber in April 2019
- Going officially “Live” with Amber in July, 2019
- Hitting our first 1000 user milestone by Christmas of 2019
Since then, we’ve raised some capital from an incredible set of investors including Morgan Creek Capital and Fulgur Ventures, we’ve grown our user base, expanded the product feature set and helped our users accumulate more than $5m worth of the hardest money known to man, ie; Bitcoin.
2020 came with its own set of challenges, but despite the ‘pandemic’ and the catastrophic economic & social damage caused by government mandated lockdowns worldwide, we’ve come out stronger and have seen steady growth across all of our key metrics.
We stand by our original convictions, and I am extremely proud to say that despite pressure from ‘potential investors’ (whom we turned down), ‘influences’ (whom we decided to work with) and many others (who we no longer associate with), we never deviated.
We remained Bitcoin-Only from the start, and we are committed to being the leading Bitcoin accumulation product in Australia, and one day; the world.
Not all smooth sailing
It wasn’t all smooth sailing though.
Many people know me these days as an adamant, intolerant “Bitcoin Maximalist”, and few would know that in the beginning, I dabbled in shitcoinery.
I came into the space via Bitcoin, then found Ethereum, thought it was interesting, traded shitcoins, lost a bunch of money, participated in a bunch of ICOs, made money, lost money and within about 7 or 8mths of that stupidity I came to the realisation that Bitcoin is where it was at.
There were a few things that helped in the early days, and I’ll give credit where credit is due:
- I read a series of whitepapers, and in the span of a weekend, I lost about 20 points of IQ. I was absolutely appalled at the how these ridiculous ideas, some cheap marketing and non-sensical “token issuances that implied no ownership or control” could be used as vehicles to raise millions of dollars.
- The more I listened to Vitalik Buterin talk about Ethereum, the more my bullshit radar could sense a Theranos part 2.
- The stupidest people I knew were trading shitcoins
- I’ve always been a student of philosophy and work from Taleb, Peterson (Harari at the time, but I no longer think he’s interesting) helped me frame Bitcoin through a critically important, evolutionary lens.
- Andreas Antonopolous’ early work (he’s gone a bit mad now)
- Jimmy Song & Giacomo Zucco on Tone Vays’ show were brilliant
These things helped plant the early seeds for me, and I then joined twitter in 2018.
My first well-received article was Homo sapiens, Evolution, Money & Bitcoin.
This put me ‘on the map’, so to speak, and I slowly began to find my tribe.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Bitcoin, Bitcoin Twitter, Bitcoiners and The Bitcoin community have kept me enthralled and continue to do so.
They say that when you find something you’re willing to die for, you know you’ve found something to live for. Bitcoin is that thing for me. What it represents, what it means and the impact it’s going to have at this nexus of history is unprecedented.
This chapter of my life is about Bitcoin, my writing is my poetic expression, Amber is my entrepreneurial expression and I am honoured to be a part of this family.
Amber’s near miss
Amber’s journey was a bit precarious at the outset too.
In the beginning, we were a little confused as to what the company should do and be. The ICO craze was still in full swing and I was watching people with ridiculous ideas raise tens of millions of dollars overnight.
Despite this lunacy and the very real incentive to do so, we DID NOT ICO.
Something I remain proud of to this day:
Our next challenge was the identity and mission of the company. The pressure to build an app that helped people “trade” different crypto’s was real. There were no “Bitcoin-only” apps where you could simply buy just Bitcoin.
The original tagline was to “make crypto accessible to everyday people”.
Thankfully, I was falling deeper down the rabbit hole and discovering the real essence of this movement, ie; the introduction of sound, uncensorable, un-inflatable and unconfiscatable money.
It was here, before we had gone too far on our journey that we made the call to be Bitcoin only.
Investors called me crazy. The original team thought I was nuts. Even prospective customers said they would “love to see other cryptos”.
We held strong.
I wrote a few pieces on Why Amber is a Bitcoin business, not a crypto company, to help drive the point home:
In time, I found investors, shareholders, partners, a team and ultimately customers and a community who would back that vision.
It’s been a few years now, and we’re still here. Stronger than ever, watching the fruits of not only our labour, but of our foresight & fortitude, come to bear.
I could not be more proud.
Today
We now have the most seamless, easy to use and focused Bitcoin accumulation app, available in Australia.
After almost 2yrs of building, adjusting, improving, listening, grinding and sticking to our guns, we are now ready to close out 2020 and usher in 2021.
I could not be more proud of the team, the work they’ve put in, the support we’ve received from our customers and most importantly, how far the product has come.
We’ve recently launched “Amber Black” which is our premium, membership version of that app. It comes with some advanced automation features, such as:
- Auto-Buy-The-Dip (BTD)
- Auto-Sell-The-Pump (STP)
- Auto-Withdraw (to your own self custody)
- Intra-day DCA (coming this Christmas)
- Limit orders (coming soon)
And most importantly, ZERO fee buys and sells.
We’re going to continue to change the game with Amber Basic and Amber Black, so whether your a newbie or a sat-stacking Bitcoin aficionado, we’ve got you covered.
Tomorrow
We have loads planned for 2021, but the big ticket item is our USA launch.
Watch this space, as we’ll have more news in January about our plans.
For now, the focus is on closing out 2020 strong. Speaking of which, we have a special announcement..
Product Hunt
This week, we’re launching on Product Hunt. This is our chance to get a real Bitcoin-only product in front of a global audience.
We’d absolutely LOVE your support today, the 10th of December.
If you already have a Product Hunt account, it’s super easy.
You can support the launch in a few ways:
- If you love what we’re doing, you can “UPVOTE” the product and any comments you see
- You can leave a comment, and engage with the team if you have any questions.
- You can leave a rating (the green smiley face)
Product Hunt launches are time sensitive, so if you have 30sec available now to set up your account and follow me, and 30sec on the day to support, it would really mean a lot.
If you don’t already have a Product Hunt account, it’s really easy to create one. (Please don’t create one on the day & upvote — we may get penalised for that).
Just follow these steps:
- Set up an account on Product Hunt
- Follow me @Aleksandar_Svetski (that way you’ll get a notification when we launch)
- Like 👍 and share our LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram or Facebook posts.
I really want to thank you all in advance for taking the time to not only read about our story, but to support us.
It really means a lot.
Here’s to a successful Product Hunt launch, a great close to a crazy year, a strong start to 2021, and Bitcoin all-time-highs in the new year!
Aleks Svetski
CEO & Co-Founder @ Amber Labs
You can also follow me on, Twitter, LinkedIn & here on Medium.
