BRD’s Adam Traidman on New Products, Crypto Adoption, and Banking the Unbanked Into 2020

BC: With over 2 million users in 170 countries, the BRD wallet is well-trusted for its open source, non-custodial and secure design, with many also complimenting the user-friendly interface. Is the key to onboarding in your opinion a combo of privacy and ease of use?

AT: Nearly 3 million users now. The key to successful onboarding starts before that, much further up on the funnel. It’s brand, brand, and brand. That’s been the key to our success. We’ve operated for a long time now with the highest of ethics and transparency. We’ve stuck to our principles when others chased fast money, and this is how we’ve endured the downturn that started in mid-2018.

Our CMO, Spencer Chen, has done a fantastic job in creating a brand that’s both welcoming, embracing, and warm to all consumers in an industry that’s frankly been alienating to new participants.

I’ll give you the Apple example: Their brand engenders trust, you’d buy anything from them … from phones to music. For the consumer business, it all starts with the brand. Our CMO, Spencer Chen, has done a fantastic job in creating a brand that’s both welcoming, embracing, and warm to all consumers in an industry that’s frankly been alienating to new participants. He often jokes that there’s this green-on-black-Matrix-like aesthetic that’s plaguing the crypto industry.

BC: BRD has stated that “Our goal is to bring the number of people unbanked from 1.7 billion to 0,” and emphasized the critical importance of direct wealth ownership and financial sovereignty. How will this vision be made reality?

AT: Usability. Tons more usability for everyday consumers, especially for the unbanked and underbanked. As an example, when there were big issues with the central bank in Venezuela in 2018, we saw a massive uptick in new users from the country. I think we were the #4 ranked app for the entire country. But there was still usability issues, such as the inability to easily send crypto to friends in their address book or trying to understand what seed phrases are and their importance.

There’s just a lot of non-intuitive usability issues for the mainstream audience and the quicker we address them, the faster the broad adoption among the unbanked. This remains the top priority on our consumer roadmap — usability as the killer feature.

What do you think of BRD and Adam Traidman’s thoughts on adoption and the crypto industry? Let us know in the comments section below.