- There have been a few attempts to integrate Bitcoin payments into Whatsapp
- Sending bitcoin through the messaging service would be a major adoption boost
- What attempts have there been and where have they left us?
The key to Bitcoin adoption is making it as easy to use as fiat currency, which means integrating it into everyday life. To this end, the popular messaging service Whatsapp would appear to be a key tool in this adoption race, and, indeed, there have been attempts to integrate Bitcoin into Whatsapp. But how have they fared, and where have they left us?
Wuabit Plans Fall Flat
The first suggestion that Whatsapp users might be able to send bitcoin through the app came in March 2019 when it was reported that Wuabit, a service that specialises in sending cryptocurrencies through messaging services, was signing people up for a beta version.
However, this may have just been a marketing ploy from Wuabit, which doesn’t seem to have made any progress on this front in three and a half years. Indeed, its Twitter account has been almost totally dormant since March this year, suggesting that the project has gone to the great crypto rubbish dump in the sky.
Novi Plans Killed by Platform Collapse
Talks of Bitcoin-Whatsapp integration were rekindled in December 2021 when Facebook’s Novi project (formerly its Libra cryptocurrency) announced a trial where Whatsapp users could send bitcoin through the messaging service with Novi integration making it a theoretically easy process.
However, the promising trial came just days after Novi’s head David Marcus had left the project, which was already going down the toilet after major setbacks and a rebrand. The dream finally died in July this year when Novi and all its constituent parts were sold off, killing any hopes of sending bitcoin via Whatsapp that way.
Lite.im Still Going!
The only ray of light is another project, Lite.im, which in 2019 produced its own version of a Whatsapp/Bitcoin bridge. This took the form of a bot that allowed the sending of BTC through a message service, although the execution was a little clunky at the time.
The good news however is that this project is still going, although it still looks a little on the clunky side, and will only be used by those who are, for whatever reason, desperate to send BTC through Whatsapp.
Still, until Whatsapp integrates direct Bitcoin transactions it’s the best option currently out there.
