Company Name: Cake Wallet
Founders: Vik Sharma
Date Founded: October 2017
Location of Headquarters: Saint Kitts and Nevis (with a remote labor force)
Number of Employees: 14
Website: https://cakewallet.com/
Public or Private? Private
Vik Sharma, while acting as the CEO of Liberty Steel, commits his efforts towards boosting the functionality and personal privacy of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies through Cake Wallet. He presumes that for an item to accomplish extensive adoption, user-friendliness should be vital, which lies at the core of Cake Wallet’s objective.
Sharma articulates that the overarching objective of Cake Wallet is to equalize cryptocurrency use, making it possible for people to effortlessly send out, get, hold, and exchange cryptocurrencies comparable to popular platforms like Venmo or PayBuddy. This aspiration is matched by a strong dedication to transactional personal privacy, a concept Sharma extremely worths, especially due to the intrinsic openness of Bitcoin.
Prioritizing Privacy
Sharma’s journey with Bitscoins.netmenced in November 2013 when he started obtaining and mining the cryptocurrency. Armed with ASIC miners sourced from eBay, he effectively created roughly 0.2 Bitcoin daily at that time. By the mid-2010s, he desired use his Bitcoin instead of simply hold it, yet he discovered that just illegal online markets primarily accepted the cryptocurrency.
Reflecting on this duration, Sharma kept in mind, “Back then, it was hard to find anyone that took bitcoin. You had Silk Road, and then AlphaBay and other darknet markets, and I thought, ‘Let me check this out.’” Unfortunately, upon trying to buy products from these websites, he discovered himself alerted of an infraction of legal borders.
“I sent Bitcoin directly from my Coinbase account to the darknet address,” Sharma stated. Shortly afterwards, he got an alert from Coinbase notifying him that his account had actually been suspended due to an infraction of regards to service. This experience triggered him to acknowledge the transparent nature of Bitcoin, leading him to check out Monero (XMR) as an option.
Sharma’s intrigue in Monero, a cryptocurrency kept in mind for its personal privacy functions, eventually assisted him towards the conception of Cake Wallet, which at first operated exclusively as a Monero wallet.
Cake Wallet and Silent Payments
Cake Wallet was formally released in January 2018, with the addition of Bitcoin performance happening roughly one year later on. However, for a prolonged period, users of Cake Wallet dealt with restrictions in carrying out personal deals with Bitcoin. The wallet did not have a Lightning Network application and other privacy-enhancing functions, making Monero users more matched for personal payments.
In September 2024, Cake Wallet took a substantial action by ending up being the very first Bitcoin wallet to execute Silent Payments, enabling users to get Bitcoin payments without divulging their public Bitcoin addresses. This development works as a protective procedure for users participating in fundraising or public deals.
Sharma revealed optimism concerning this function, mentioning, “When I read about Silent Payments, I liked it right away. I wish the Bitscoins.netmunity was more enthusiastic about it, because I think it’s a great feature, especially if you’re posting an address publicly, whether for donations or payments.”
His remark is especially pertinent considered that Cake Wallet’s Bird Pay function counts on users sharing their addresses openly. Introduced roughly one year back, Bird Pay enables Cake Wallet users to move Bitcoin (or other cryptocurrencies) to a contact exclusively utilizing an X manage.
“CakeWallet will use the Twitter API to pull the address and send the payment to you,” Sharma highlighted, keeping in mind that this technique can likewise be made use of with platforms such as Nostr or Mastodon.
Cause for Concern
Although the Bitcoin and Monero neighborhoods have actually invited the personal privacy includes used by Cake Wallet, Sharma harbors issues concerning possible analysis from the U.S. federal government. In an environment significantly mindful of privacy-enhancing crypto services, it raises considerable apprehension for any entity establishing privacy-preserving innovation.
Sharma mentioned, “It does worry me — and not because we’re doing anything wrong. But something could be twisted or construed to make it seem as if we are doing something wrong.” In reaction, he has actually moved Cake Wallet’s head office overseas, embracing Saint Kitts and Nevis as its brand-new base, following the suggestions of market figures such as Roger Ver.
To guarantee compliance with policies, Sharma works together carefully with Cake Wallet’s basic counsel, going over any updates to the platform to prevent legal mistakes. While legal consultants have actually verified that the business stays certified, Sharma acknowledges the capacity for misconceptions of laws to present difficulties for Cake Wallet.
He elaborated, “If you dig deep enough into the way the laws are written, they might say, ‘No, you’re a money transmitter business, even though we’re not.’ We’re not touching users’ funds. We don’t have access to them. Even though we built the app, once that app is on the user’s phone, it’s being generated on their phone, not on our servers.”
Staying on Mission
Despite the pushing legal factors to consider, Sharma and the Cake Wallet group stay unfaltering in their dedication to their objective, focusing on the ease and personal privacy of Bitcoin use for their users. “We have stuck to our ethos,” highlighted Sharma, “and the team often challenges one another to ensure that new features do not compromise privacy, engaging in internal debates to uphold these standards.”
Notably, Sharma has actually avoided accepting equity capital financing for Cake Wallet, enabling him and his group to focus mostly on the requirements and desires of their user base without external pressures for monetary returns. “Since we’re not beholden to a VC, investment firm, or an angel investor looking for a return, we are empowered to pursue what our users want and what our community demands,” he concluded.
Thank you for visiting our site. You can get the latest Information and Editorials on our site regarding bitcoins.
