Bitwala Releases Pioneering 'Siri For Bitcoin' Lolabot

International remittance service Bitwala has released Lolabot, a crypto education tool based on artificial intelligence. It claims this is the world’s first “Siri for Bitcoin.”

Also read: Closing The Circle: Bitcoin And Remittances

Lolabot ‘Hopes to Answer Every Possible Bitcoin Question’

Lolabot, named after the Bitwala office’s resident pet bulldog, uses voice recognition and “natural language processing” among other tools. It answers user questions about Bitcoin, as well as Bitwala the company.

“LolaBot gets smarter and smarter the more questions you ask,” CEO Jörg von Minckwitz said in a post accompanying the release. “We hope that in the future Lola can answer every question about Bitcoin that you can possibly come up with.”

Similar to Apple’s Siri, Lolabot accrues knowledge over time, becoming more intuitive and providing more succinct answers as usage increases. Users are also able to ask questions using keyboard input.

Bitcoin’s “first-ever virtual assistant” is already able to answer queries such as Bitcoin’s current price and its inventor, the release stated.

Von Minckwitz added:

“One of our main goals, since we entered the Bitcoin community in 2011, is education on Bitcoin. We wanted to make learning about Bitcoin more intuitive and what is more intuitive than simply asking?”

Straight Talking On Crypto Payments Market

Bitwala has seen a spurt of activity in the last few months. First it closed an €800,000 funding round from investors including Barry Silbert in April. Then the company began experimenting with outreach tools, such as accepting over 40 altcoins for money transfers.

Nonetheless, a post last month showed a no-nonsense approach to the market, with Bitwala stating that while “everybody is excited about altcoins… nobody is using them.” It added that its decision to accept rising altcoins, such as Monero and Steem, resulted in favorable reactions and an increase in users — but a notable lack of volume.

The altcoin market remains the focus of other consumer spending players. As Bitwala claimed lackluster usage, fellow payment startup Wirex announced a partnership with Shapeshift.io to facilitate instant spending of all its supported currencies. These included, of course, a raft of altcoins.

“One of the most popular customer requests was to make a multi-asset-friendly debit card and with ShapeShift integration we have finally made this possible,” Wirex co-founder Pavel Matveev said.

Whether Lolabot will deliver new wisdom on the future of Bitcoin or altcoins, meanwhile, remains uncertain. A request from Bitcoin.com to explain Sidechains yielded the following response, delivered somewhat ironically in a German accent:

“I am a French Bulldog. Woof woof.”

What do you think about Lolabot? Let us know in the comments section below!

Images via Shutterstock, Bitwala

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