Help us bring Bitcoin to the street. Like you, we love Bitcoin. We want to educate people. We want to make it very easy to get and spend Bitcoin, and we want vendors to understand how to accept it.

In the last year, we have used cryptocurrency to buy coffee, beer and dinner, in London and Berlin. We have sent people tips on Twitter and YouTube to make them smile, and bought T-shirts in the US.

This year Dell announced you could buy their computers with Bitcoin, Expedia offered holidays, and a major US household and universal retailer Overstock announced they would take Bitcoin payments. If you plan on travelling to the moon, Virgin Galactic will sell you a seat for Bitcoin. And so far, three airlines that we know of accept Bitcoin. Most of this commercial adoption has happened this year (2014)!

"We want to get our Bitcoin cards into a major international retail chain by Christmas 2015"

Where do you buy Bitcoin?

If you know the answer to this question, you probably already have Bitcoin. We asked loads of people on the street, and nobody know where to get Bitcoin, or what they could do with it. Buying Bitcoin is a pain. You have to use your bank account, in conjunction with a Bitcoin exchange or an escrow service, to get it. It's nerve racking! Getting set up and purchasing Bitcoin for the first time can potentially take hours before the Bitcoin belongs to you. Bitcoin ATMs are much easier: you insert cash and Bitcoin is sent to your wallet, but there are not many of them. We checked. In London, there are six, to serve a population of 13 million people! You will not find them in your local shopping centre.

Here's the answer

It's simple. You walk into a shop, pick up a Coinero card and have it activated at the checkout. Then you scan the QR code on the back with our app, and the Bitcoin is transferred into your wallet.

We want to bring Bitcoin (and, we hope, other cryptocurrencies) to the checkout of wherever you shop, so that topping up your Bitcoin balance is just like any other top-up voucher card (for example, iTunes, Google Play, Starbucks).

Product designs

Here are some 3D visualisations of the Coinero card which we have prepared for production. The final packs may vary slightly from these illustrations. But you get the idea.

The cards have no value until activated on purchase. The Coinero phone app helps you transfer the Bitcoin to your local wallet. It doesn't matter whether you are new to Bitcoin or already have a wallet: the app will get you up and running in minutes.

"Opening a Bitcoin shop that trades with Bitcoin only will give us business intelligence and help us understand merchant and consumer concerns"

Ultimately we want to get our Bitcoin cards into major retail chains internationally. In order to achieve this, we need to collate business intelligence to demonstrate a level of commercial viability that international retailers can't ignore. Opening a Bitcoin shop that both trades with Bitcoin and sells our own product will help us understand both merchant and consumer concerns.

Perks for your support

We spent a long time coming up with designs and ideas for this great range of Bitcoin swag. We will stock our pop-up shop with them, and sell them for Bitcoin.

You can get them before anyone else :D

Irrespective of which one you choose, your commitment to the future of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies will be a permanent feature on the Coinero website. Everyone who supports our project will have their name listed on the "wall of fame".

Beta-tester preloaded cards:

Be one of the first people in the world to receive a Coinero card! We will ship you a card from our first batch, pre-loaded with Bitcoin to transfer to your wallet. By choosing one of these perks you will become an automatic part of our beta tester programme. We want your feedback. You will get an additional beta tester credit on our website.

"Proud to be Bitcoin" perks:

Every crowdfunding campaign needs to have some silliness. Here is our range of Bitcoin branded swag, designed by us for you. You can see the larger images by visiting the gallery section.

Business partnership perks:

Silver Partner listing

A permanent listing in the SILVER section on the Partners page of the Coinero website. Your listing will have your logo in addition to a short company description and link to your website.

Gold Partner listing

Your logo in the Partner carousel that appears in the footer of all pages on our website, with a direct link to your business. Forever. PLUS a permanent place in the GOLD partner section at the top of our Partners page. Your listing will have a larger logo in addition to a short company description and link to your website.

"We will use the money to print the first batch of Bitcoin cards, finish developing our activation app and rent a Bitcoin pop-up shop in Shoreditch, London"

Why we need your support

The funds will accelerate:

developing a secure app (for Android, iOS and Windows Phone)
developing the infrastructure for Coinero card activation.
prototyping, printing and beta-testing the cards
hosting public events for Bitcoin awareness
renting a pop-up store to promote the products

The money we raise on indiegogo will allow us to rent a pop-up shop in the Shoreditch area (the epicenter of Bitcoin in the UK), where people will be able to buy Coinero cards and merchandise and learn all about Bitcoin.

Projected fund distribution

(See the approximate cost breakdown in the FAQ section below)

This is not a fad. People really are using Bitcoin

This graph came from Blockchain.info . Have a look at the graph yourself. It illustrates the daily number of Bitcoin transactions.

Not just Bitcoin ... any coin!

Dogecoin - this could be our next coin card

There are loads of other cryptocurrencies, and Dogecoin is the most popular online community. They are famous for sponsoring a NASCAR racing car, and they love nothing more than tipping and fund-raising for charity. Once our system is up and running, we'll have the ideal platform to produce and deliver any altcoin card. We hope the next one will be Dogecoin.

FAQ

£150,00. Wow! That is a lot of money. Can you break it down? Yes, of course. It's worth mentioning that we are doing this campaign as a limited company rather than as individuals so that all accounts can be audited. So far we have spent £18,000 to get it this far. That is from our own pockets. We are not drawing a salary. We need about £80,000 to pay for specialist software development and card distribution. That is excluding servers, hosting, office rent, and when the shop opens that will cost an additional £15,000 every three months for rent in a busy commercial centre. Printing the Bitcoin cards is very cheap, everything else required for them to work safely in existing commercial infrastructure is enormously expensive. The pie chart above is accurate. (Presuming £150,000)

Is the card a wallet? No. The card contains a code that allows you to import the stated cash value of Bitcoin into your own phone or laptop wallet. We believe it is one of the fundamental principles of using Bitcoin that people have full responsibility for their private key

I don't have a Bitcoin wallet. How do I know what to do? The Coinero phone app, which will be available on iTunes, the Google Play Store or on our website, will guide you through the process of installing an approved open-source Bitcoin wallet and transferring funds

Why would people use your cards instead of buying Bitcoin more cheaply on an exchange? Most people (especially those who are using Bitcoin for the first time) don't want the hassle of going through the exchange verification process and making bank transfers. We are aiming to make it easy for everyone to use Bitcoin.

The Bitcoin rate goes up and down. How will someone know how much Bitcoin they will receive? When the card is activated at the till, the value that is attributed to the card will be the Bitcoin price at this moment, plus a small percentage, probably around 4%. We believe that this compares favourably with the 5-7% commission charged by ATMs or the average 12% premium added by LocalBitcoins sellers.

Where do I find out how to spend Bitcoin? Check out https://airbitz.co/ for a full listing of businesses online and in your area who accept Bitcoin. We're also working actively with a couple of businesses in the area (one of them a chain) to help them adopt Bitcoin payments, and will be posting an update on the Indiegogo campaign page with a report from the evening we are doing with them.