Today, we launched Pebble version 1.1.2 — allowing users to deposit, save, and spend their USDC. As a young startup with limited resources, we always put a lot of thought into what to add and subtract for our product. Here, I'll break down the exact thought process we had internally in approaching this new feature we're very excited about.
As we spoke to our users, we discovered a huge problem in the crypto landscape that no one could find a good product for. People were holding thousands if not hundreds of thousands of USDC at any given time. Why? Because just like crypto hedge funds, USDC provided a cheap and efficient settlement layer for the retail user. However, if they needed to use USDC to purchase coffee or pay a credit card bill, they must pay an exchange fee and wait days to be able to spend it as fiat. Users, as a result, must choose between on-chain convenience or real life liquidity. Existing solutions — even “abstracted” ones — proved too complicated, slow, and/or costly for users to deal with. Examples include web-app only sign-ups or separate wallets for crypto/cash. And so . . . USDC (the most efficient solution towards keeping a stable value on-chain) remains the most inefficient in the real world. Now, we circle back to the mission of Pebble. Bridging Web2 and Web3. Allowing users to easily send their “stuck” USDC into their Pebble Wallet — and access our 5% APY, 5% cash back, debit card, bill pay, and soon-to-come P2P — turned into a natural next feature for us. In fact, even before this product launch, we’ve manually processed beta users’ USDC transactions into their Pebble wallet — following their requests. Now that we’ve automated this process, we’re excited to provide this unique value proposition to all our existing and new customers. Keeping our non-crypto users in mind, we’ve also stuck to our ideals of simplicity. Layered into the same UX as bank account deposits, Pebble remains a financial product that can truly put money to work for everyone. If you still haven’t checked us out, download Pebble on the App Store here.
Aaron Bai