Listen to the interview with Aaron Lasher, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Bread (BRD) wallet

At the North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami, Crypto.IQ interviewed Aaron Lasher, the Co-Founder and chief strategy officer at Bread (BRD), which is an easy to use mobile cryptocurrency wallet on iOS and Android. Bread (BRD) currently integrates Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), and about 150 ERC-20 tokens. Bread (BRD) wallet launched in 2015 and now has 1.8 million users after gaining 1 million users over the past year.

The Bread (BRD) wallet is unique in that it stores zero wallet data on servers. The wallet data and private keys are stored on the user’s mobile device behind a secure enclave, and not on a server. This is in stark contrast to popular mobile wallet Blockchain.com which does store user’s data on servers, including private keys. Users of Blockchain.com mobile wallets have to trust that Blockchain.com will not get hacked, while users of Bread (BRD) mobile wallets do not have to worry about this issue. This makes Bread (BRD) wallets more secure than Blockchain.com wallets, and more in-line with the core crypto principle of only holding private keys yourself and not storing them anywhere else.

“The major benefit is there is no middleman,” Lasher said. “You’re literally talking to Bitcoin (BTC) nodes around the world, specifically 3 random nodes. That’s what your phone does. It just pings the network, finds 3 random nodes, and asks them what’s going on.”

Further, Bread (BRD) wallet does not collect any identity information from customers, which is in-line with the core crypto principle of anonymity.

“One of the main benefits of our wallet is that we actually know nothing about our customers,” Lasher said. “We don’t know their names, their phone numbers, or who they are. We also don’t have visibility into their transactions. We don’t know their balances nor how much they are sending or receiving”.

Since no wallet data is stored on the server, users must store their 12-word seed phrase in the event that they lose their phone or forget the pin code to login to the wallet.

“Protecting your money is actually really easy, but you have to write down these 12 words and keep them safe,” he said. “That’s the only burden that’s put upon you. The reason is we can’t help you find your finds. The same way that we can’t access your funds, we have no way of recovering them if you lose your phone, if you upgrade your phone, or if your phone is stolen. We try to target the basic user. The bar is set that if you want to introduce your grandmother to cryptocurrency this is the right wallet to do so. We try to avoid feature bloat, and do not add things the average user is going to be confused by.”

The Bread (BRD) wallet also has a token called BRD that launched in December 2017. BRD is a utility token, not a security. Bread (BRD) wallet never markets the BRD token for investment, and it’s used within the app as a points system for various discounts.

There is a crypto to crypto exchange within the BRD wallet, making it easy to trade between Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), and all the ERC-20 tokens. This is another advantage that Bread (BRD) wallet has over the Blockchain.com wallet, which has no crypto to crypto exchange feature.

“We went from $20,000 per Bitcoin (BTC) to $3,200 per Bitcoin (BTC) in 2018,” Lasher said. “Finding real traction and growth under those circumstances is hard, and we did it… We grew quite a bit faster than the benchmarks in the rest of the industry”.

It is perhaps not surprising that Bread (BRD) wallet has had so much success despite the 2018 bear market. Bread (BRD) wallet has some of the main advantages of the Bitcoin Core wallet, but is designed for mobile phones and can be downloaded quickly.