Welcome back to Bitcoin Bites. Fourth edition. Same job as always: find bitcoin products doing design well, show you what they built and why it works. Let’s get into it.

Translating the long shot

Traxe is an iOS app for monitoring a Bitaxe, the open source home miner. It either finds a whole block or it finds nothing. Traxe writes a Summary using Apple Intelligence on the device: “Average hashrate over 13 days: 876,2 GH/s. This miner’s solo odds to hit a block are 1 in 7,8M today (21,3K yr expected).” The charts themselves, hashrate range and daily temperature, sit one tap below in Weekly Recap.

💡 Behind the bite

A Bitaxe throws off plenty of numbers: gigahashes, chip temp, fan speed. None of them answer the question you actually have, which is whether the thing is working and whether you’ll ever win. Traxe does the math and says it in a sentence. “1 in 7,8M today (21,3K yr expected)” is a number you can feel. The lesson: charts show you data, a sentence tells you what it means.

Making the node yours

Umbrel lets you change your home screen wallpaper from Settings, and it shows you the result in three places at once. A small preview card in the top left renders your actual home screen. Elegant crossfades and soft blur included.

💡 Behind the bite

An Umbrel node is a box in a closet. Umbrel decided the home screen was worth caring about and then did the work to make changing it feel good. Pulling the accent color from the wallpaper means one tap restyles the whole system, down to the progress bars. It makes a settings toggle feel like something you enjoy doing, and that comes entirely from the details.

Trusting the second screen

Trezor Suite shows your receive address even with the device unplugged and puts an amber banner above the QR: “Device Trezor Safe 7 isn’t connected. Connect your Trezor to continue with the verification process.” Underneath, a “Before confirming on Trezor” card walks through the steps.

💡 Behind the bite

The screen on a hardware wallet exists because your computer might be lying. Malware can swap an address on your computer, and the device display is the one surface it can’t reach. Trezor Suite says so without inducing panic. The optional but recommend verification step is explained. The lesson: a warning can stay calm and still be taken seriously.

That’s edition four. If you’ve spotted bitcoin design worth featuring, send it to erikcativo@pm.me. Good work spreads when people point at it.

Welcome back to Bitcoin Bites. Third edition. Same format: real examples of bitcoin products doing design well, what they built, why it works, what you can take from it. Let’s get into it.

Renaming the hard part

Arke (still in beta) shows a red “Refresh critical now” banner on your Payments balance when an Ark refresh is needed. Tap it and you get a plain language screen: what’s being refreshed, the amount, the fee, and a Start button. Arke then tells you it’s safe to close the app, the work continues in the background.

💡 Behind the bite

Ark is a new protocol and the underlying mechanics aren’t simple. VTXOs expire, users need to renew their balance on a schedule, and missing the window mat have consequences. Some might bury this in settings or dump the protocol vocabulary on the user. Arke just called it a “refresh,” flags it on the home screen when it matters, and shows only what you need to act: amount, fee, one button.

Security as a ladder

Blockstream frames wallet security as two levels you can compare side by side: Mobile (Level 1) and Hardware (Level 2). Each level shows what it’s good for, what it protects against, and where the keys live. Tap Hardware and you don’t just get an explanation, you get a “Set Up Hardware Wallet” button. No hardware wallet yet? There’s a “Don’t have one? Buy a Jade” link right below it.

💡 Behind the bite

Some wallets treat security as a settings screen: a list of toggles you either understand or don’t. Blockstream turns it into levels. Level 1 vs Level 2, with simple explainers (”Ideal for small amounts” vs “Ideal for long-term storage”). Then they close the loop, knowing you should use a hardware wallet is useless if the next step is a Claude search and hours of research. Blockstream skips the gap and hands you the link. The lesson: education without a path to action is just homework.

Remembering how you paid

Bitrefill’s checkout pre-selects the payment method and wallet you used last time, labeled “Last used.” Other options are still there if you need them.

💡 Behind the bite

Bitcoin checkout has more decision points than fiat: currency, network, wallet, rail. Most apps surface all of them every time, as if you might reconsider on every purchase. You don’t. People settle into a setup and stick with it. Bitrefill makes that the default, which matters most when you’re buying under pressure, an eSIM right after landing, a gift card at the register. The lesson: defaults should match behavior.

That’s a wrap on edition three. If you’ve spotted bitcoin design worth featuring, send it to erikcativo@pm.me. The more we spotlight, the more we raise the bar.

Community 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

• We are organizing another design track at the Freedom Tech Summit on June 10, the day before BTC Prague. Join us, and let us know if you’d like to do a talk.

• The Between Us project is in full swing, a site documenting real human stories of people using bitcoin and AI built for non-bitcoiners. Calls are happening regularly in the community and it’s being built fully in public. Come join!

• Christoph and Erik presented a UX/UI masterclass for the Plan B Academy Business Track, covering how to think about digital product design in the bitcoin ecosystem

Seeking feedback 🗣️👂

• Help review the new SeedSigner case study PR in the Bitcoin Design Guide.rawBit is a free, open-source visual tool for building raw Bitcoin transactions from scratch, with 14 interactive lessons. The developer would love UI feedback and is happy to do a live walkthrough session.

• Erik is working on new onboarding for Numo and is looking for Android app recommendations with great design for inspiration.

• Miro wrote about Bitcoin through a brand lens, what does the brand nobody built and everybody owns actually look like? Read it and share your thoughts.

• Mo published a new post on AI workflows for UX designers, including a real example of an agent analysing the UX of bitcoin wallets. She’s also looking to host a series of community calls on how to build your own agents as a UX designer. Who’s interested?

• Yashraj is exploring a BCAP extension concept called Consensus Monitor, aimed at helping bitcoin stakeholders understand protocol upgrade proposals and make informed decisions. Feedback welcome on GitHub.

• Mo hosted the first ever call on designing user experiences for hardware wallets. Veronika followed up with a wild idea: what if a SeedSigner cover was 3D-printed as interlocking LEGO-style blocks?

Conferences 📅

• Bitcoin++ has several upcoming events in Nevada on April 24+24, Vienna on May 27+28, Kenya on June 17-20, and more.

• MIT Bitcoin Expo was last weekend in Boston. Catch up with the live stream recordings here and here.

• Bitcoin 2026 will be April 27-29 in Las Vegas.

Opportunities 💡

• Bringin is looking for a QA Tester.

• Block Rewards is looking for a UI Designer.

Everything else 😀

• Brandon Quittem shared his research findings on the personality types of bitcoiners with nearly 1,500 responses. Worth thinking about how this shapes the products we build.

• Mo shared thoughts on Jack Dorsey’s vision for Block and Sprout, a Nostr-based layer where humans and AI agents communicate through one shared intelligence layer. She also filed an issue on their GitHub about designing the human signal layer.

• Summer of Bitcoin students are rolling into the community! The focus project is a UX research rethink of the Bitcoin Design Guide in the era of AI.

• Johns and Lewis launched PXPUSH, a new type of studio leaning into human + robot creative collaboration, delivering work in 24–72 hours.

• Sahil Chaturvedi shared his journey into the bitcoin world as a designer, a great read on going all in.

• Fedi released a wallet redesign focused on simplified onboarding and a cleaner wallet experience. Do you use it regularly?

• Applications for the first designer cohort of the Bitcoin Design Adoption Network are open, focused on transforming African designers to create sovereign, human-centred bitcoin experiences.

• Christoph shared Pave Protocol, a concept for standardising last-mile bitcoin to fiat payments, allowing self-custodial bitcoin wallets to pay any phone number, bank account, or crypto address without additional regulatory burden on the wallet.

• Tether launched a wallet. Paulo already has thoughts on its (lack of) privacy.

—

For more, visit the Bitcoin Design website and follow us.

This update is brought to you by Christoph & Mo. We’d love to hear your feedback.

Community 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

• The Designing Hardware Wallets call is coming up on March 5. Yishi will walk through her redesign of SeedSigner. If you’ve ever wondered how to make cold storage feel less like a space mission, this one’s for you.

• Friday jam sessions are open spaces to bring questions, collaborate, or just hang out. Check the events tab for the next one.

• The “Between Us” project is taking shape. What started as “Humans of Bitcoin” now has a name, a brand direction, and a growing community channel. Dive in and share your ideas.

• Mo is opening up the network. She’s been quietly mentoring UX designers into the Bitcoin space for years and now she’s creating more structure around it. If you want guidance entering the space, DM her to get on the invite list for upcoming calls.

Seeking feedback 🗣️👂

• Anyone researching bitcoin-backed loan UX? Lanapetric is looking for design patterns around loan flows, LTV communication, liquidation UX, and risk transparency. Reach out if you have thoughts, screenshots, or case studies.

• Cake Wallet’s lightning release includes some nice Silent Payments UX updates — a new SP icon, clean address formatting, label suggestions from the receive screen. Take a look.

• Marco asked whetherBitcoin Icons is still maintained. A thread followed. Check it out if you rely on the library.

Conferences 📅

• Christoph and the team are organizing the design track at the Freedom Tech Summit (formerly dev/hack/day) at BTC Prague on June 10. It’s their fourth year. If you have speaker suggestions or want to participate, comment here.

• MIT Bitcoin Expo is coming up April 11-12.

Opportunities 💡

• Blockstream is looking for a Senior Product Designer.

• Fedi is looking for a Product Designer.

• Block Rewards is looking for a UI Designer.

Everything else 😀

• Mo will be on a live call on X with Bitcoin DADA exploring the intersection of Bitcoin and AI.

• River published a new report on bitcoin and lightning adoption in 2026. Worth a read.

• Numo just launched — a Bitcoin payments terminal that lets merchants accept payments with a tap, designed to feel as natural as Apple Pay.

• Your AI agent can now order coffee for you and pay with bitcoin via unhuman.coffee and moneydevkit. Check it out.

• A conversation summary of how the Specter hardware wallet can serve blind users.

• Early testing has started for Arké, the iOS bitcoin wallet implementing Ark (by Second). Sign up for the waitlist.

• Check out photos from the first BitDesigners Africa meetup.

• Have you experimented with bitcoin wallets for AI agents yet? Matt thinks you should.

—

For more, visit the Bitcoin Design website and follow us.

This update is brought to you by Christoph & Mo. We’d love to hear your feedback.

Welcome back to Bitcoin Bites. We’re collecting real examples of Bitcoin products doing design really well. Not theory, not hot takes.

Just: here’s what they built, here’s why it works, and here’s what you can learn from it.

Let’s jump in to this second edition.

Designing for doubt

River shows a sequence of three warnings when you send a large amount of bitcoin. Each one targets a different scam vector: pressure tactics, destination verification, and too-good-to-be-true offers.

💡 Behind the bite

Scams exploit different psychological triggers. Urgency, greed, and confusion to name a few. River doesn’t try to catch them all with one generic warning. They slow you down three times, each targeting a specific threat pattern. Yes, it adds taps. Yes, it breaks the “don’t make me think” rule. But bitcoin is irreversible, so making you think is the feature not the bug.

Hiding the plumbing

Bitkit splits your balance into “Savings” and “Spending” instead of on-chain and Lightning. When you move funds to your spending balance for the first time, they don’t explain channel liquidity or inbound capacity. They just show two fees, do the math, and tell you what you’ll actually receive.

💡 Behind the bite

Self-custodial Lightning is hard to explain: You have to spend money to receive money, channels need liquidity, etc…Bitkit doesn’t try to teach you any of this. They give you the outcome: “You will receive ₿561.” The complexity is still there, they just stopped making it your problem.

Context in the timeline

Primal is a Nostr client where you can “zap” posts—basically a like with bitcoin attached. Frequent zappers senders and receivers end up with transaction lists full of tiny amounts. Primal shows the original post beneath each zap so you remember what you reacted to.

💡 Behind the bite

When every transaction is a micropayment, your history becomes noise fast. Most wallets would just list the amounts, maybe add a timestamp, some fee details and call it done. In the zaps case, the useful information isn’t the metadata, it’s the content the zap relates to. Primal knows this and they put the post right there in your transaction details.

That’s it for this second edition of Bitcoin Bites, thanks for reading. If you see something worth highlighting, send it to erikcativo@pm.me. Let’s shine a light on the teams getting things right.

Community 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

• The Bitcoin Design Community kicked off 2026 with momentum! The Impact Initiatives 2026 call recording is now live, catch up if you missed it.

• Bitcoin Bites is here! Erik drafted the very first edition of this new newsletter format. Check out Bitcoin Bites #1.

• The first Jam Session of 2026 kicked off on January 23. It’s a free space to share what you’re working on and learn about the 2026 Impact Initiatives.

• Humans of Bitcoin launched its first community call on January 26. A new space for real stories from real people.

• UX research workshop with Emilia Rothman diving into how exchanges use gamification and dark patterns to keep users hooked.

Mark your calendars for upcoming community calls:

1. Feb 5th : Your bitcoin story matters

2. Feb 6th: Friday jam sessions are back, join us again for a chill open space to bring questions about your projects, collaborate, or just explore

3. Feb 9th: Humans of Bitcoin as we continue to shape this initiative.

Seeking feedback 🗣️👂

• Christoph created a tracking issue for the Reference Wallet initiative. Check out the Google Doc with ideas for what to work on—your input is welcome, there is also a new Discord channel launched for the Arké project channel and is inviting the first TestFlight testers soon (waitlist).

• Mo is building Humans of Bitcoin and wants your ideas! Comment on the GitHub issue or join the next call. Want to help name the project?

• Yashraj is seeking ideas and feedback on the Privacy x Design initiative which could be an awareness campaign, app idea, game, quiz or story.

• Christoph updated the issue on Quantum Computing risks with links to Nic Carter’s speculative fiction short story. An important topic we can contribute to.

• Shivang is exploring building a community agent for the community, check out the Routing and Tooling initiative.

• Yashraj proposed BIP-353 UI updates for Sparrow wallet. Take a look and share your thoughts.

• OrangeSurf did a write up about Payment Method Cards, feel free to comment.

Conferences 📅

• Watch recordings from Adopting Bitcoin Cape Town

• Bitcoin++ is coming to Brazil on Feb 26-28.

• FOSDEM, in Brussels, is coming up January 31 and February 1

• FOSS Backstage, the conference about how open-source works behind the scenes, is happening on March 16-17 in Berlin.

Opportunities 💡

• Coinkite is looking for a designer with a focus on branding.

• Debfi is looking for a senior product designer.

• Onramp Bitcoin is looking for a graphic designer

Everything else 😀

• Geyser launched all-or-nothing crowdfunding campaigns

• Bitcoin Keeper switched to a community-driven model. That means you can chip in.

• Mat launched Flint, a curated vibe coding community for builders creating new things at the frontier of bitcoin, genAI and beyond.

• Check out the bitcoin music video concept by omg21btc.

• OpenSats keeps funding open-source bitcoin projects, contributions, and education. Take a look at their latest blog posts.

• The winners of Time2Build, Breez’s hackathon, were announced.

• Summer of Bitcoin is coming up as well starting 1 February.

• Bitterms, is a project from the last designathon that simplifies bitcoin terminology.

• Mat spotted an interesting new design tool that generates hundreds of designs in parallel, making design feel more like browsing. Check it out.

—

For more, visit the Bitcoin Design website and follow us.

This update is brought to you by Christoph & Mo. We’d love to hear your feedback.

Bitcoin design can be challenging.

Designers must always strike a balance between security and simplicity. Educate without being condescending. Build trust in something decentralized. Make the irreversible feel safe.

But some teams are nailing it. We’ve noticed. Some design executions deserve to be highlighted and studied.

So we’re starting Bitcoin Bites, a collection of real examples from Bitcoin products doing design really well. No theory, no fluff. Just: here’s what works, and here’s why.

We think this is useful for anyone building in the space. Or anyone trying to understand what thoughtful Bitcoin UX looks like.

If you build Bitcoin products, this might give you ideas. If you’re learning about Bitcoin design, you’ll see what good looks like. And if you just think thoughtful design is cool, you’ll probably enjoy it.

Giving users grace

After showing you your seed phrase, Family asks you to confirm the order of 4 random words. Get one wrong twice in a row, and a friendly bottom sheet slides up offering to let you review the phrase again.

💡 Behind the bite

The detail that matters is twice in a row. One wrong tap could be a slip. Two in a row? That’s a signal you might actually need help. Family assumes competence first. You’re not being babysat, you’re being supported.

Offline transparency

Bitkey doesn’t just tell you you’re offline, it tells you how being offline affects you. An indicator shows when your balance was last updated, and tapping it reveals exactly which features still work, which are stale, and which are completely unavailable.

💡 Behind the bite

Most apps treat offline as a binary: you’re either connected or you’re not. Bitkey breaks it down. You can still receive bitcoin, your currency rates are just a day old, but sending is off the table.

Translating the protocol

Ecash introduces UX challenges you won’t find on-chain or in lightning. When you generate a token that never gets claimed, you can redeem it yourself, but the mint has no concept of “yours” or “theirs.” Sovran names this action “Rolled Back.”

💡 Behind the bite

“Rolled back” matches how a user might actually think about it: you had a balance, sent some out, and now you’re pulling it back. The timeline view reinforces this. Showing when the token was generated and when it returned, turning an abstract protocol event into a story you can follow.

That’s it for this first edition of Bitcoin Bites, thanks for reading. If you see something worth highlighting, send it to erikcativo@pm.me. Let’s shine a light on the designers getting things right.

The Bitcoin Design Community practices open design—that means we discuss and design and work in public. And it means we plan in public, too.

So, as we close out 2025 we asked ourselves the question: how can we, as a community of designers who care deeply about bitcoin, have the biggest impact on the bitcoin ecosystem and the wider world, in the coming year?

Put differently, how might we help bring about a step-function change in bitcoin?

Our answer is: you.

We’ve always believed that bitcoin is money for everyone, for people everywhere. And it will always be that.

But bitcoin—the way it evolves and improves and gains adoption everyday—is going to be shaped by: you.

You can make bitcoin beautiful and intuitive.

You can change the perception of bitcoin.

You can make bitcoin everyday money.

So this is an invitation for you to come and help us design bitcoin, to help design it to be the money that works for you, your community, and the people you care about.

Our invitation comes with a rough set of guideposts we are calling our Impact Initiatives—these are the areas we think are most worthy of high caliber design thinking and contribution. Things like creating the most impeccably-designed bitcoin reference wallet, like vibecoding new things to life on bitcoin, like telling the stories of real bitcoin users around the world, like driving adoption of Human Bitcoin Addresses, like taking the bitcoin brand in new and experimental ways. And so much more.

It’s a long list, but heck we’re choosing to be ambitious.

If you can see yourself leading the charge of any of these initiatives, or wanting to find out how you can support one, reach out in our Discord community—it’s always open.

Ask questions. Share your ideas. Make your voice heard.

Bitcoin is yours.

Design your new money.

For any designers wanting to commit to full-time design work on these impact initiatives, or similarly ambitious initiatives not yet on our radar, grants are available from Spiral—a division of Block Inc. that promotes and funds open-source bitcoin development and adoption (and helped convene the Bitcoin Design Community 5+ years ago).

Community 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

• Let’s get ambitious in 2026! Mat shared a list of design initiatives for the new year. Take a look, drop in comments, and join the community call on Friday.

• Check out the winners from Nutnovember.

• Backup Day is December 12. Is your bitcoin securely stored?

• The Bitcoin Design Guide was showcased by Arteepa at a recent conference in Mexico.

• Kelbs is exploring how to upgrade Sovran to Liquid glass.

Seeking feedback 🗣️👂

• Mutatrum asked about how to shorten addresses on hardware devices with low-resolution displays.

• Cold storage is still scary. How can this be improved?

• Mo is seeking feedback on the User Story Bank.

• Conor asked what is the number 1 request from bitcoiners who want to self-custody?

• Test ShockWallet and give design feedback.

• How should large amounts of bitcoin be displayed on hardware wallets, with the BIP-177 standard in mind?

• Yashraj is investigating potential privacy concerns with Bitkeys recent addition of Chain Code Delegation.

Conferences 📅

• Missed the Africa Bitcoin Conference? Catch up with the live stream recordings.

• What about Bitcoin Amsterdam? Recordings are here, like The Visual Language of Bitcoin.

• bitchill is happening January 18-28 in Próspera, Honduras.

Opportunities 💡

• Nick is looking for a founding designer for moneydevkit.

• Coinkite is looking for a Great Designer.

• Fedi is looking for a Product Designer.

• Bitvault is looking for a Brand Designer.

• Onramp Bitcoin is looking for a Graphic Designer.

• The Game of Satoshi is looking for a Junior Graphic Designer.

• Bitchat land is looking for a contributor.

• Shockwallet has various ways in which you can contribute.

• Looking for work or someone to work with? Check the #opportunities channel.

Everything else 😀

• Lil Satoshi (video demo) is an educational app for kids to learn about bitcoin in a fun way. And it won the best design award at Nutnovember.

• The Bitcoin Dev Project rolled out a brand refresh.

• If you’re a coder, check out the ₿OSS challenge.

• Erik wrote a retrospective on Cashu’s Bitcoin For Signal campaign.

• Bitshala organized their first design workshop.

• ATL BitLab started a new radio show (on YouTube). Listen to Evan speak about Zeus and its graduated wallet concept.

• Stephen wrote about how well lightning already works for broad usage.

• Speaking of Zeus, they created a Bitcoin Payments for Merchants trifold.

• Cashu has an advent calendar. Check it out.

—

For more, visit the Bitcoin Design website and follow us.

This update is brought to you by Christoph & Mo. We’d love to hear your feedback.

Community 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

• Take part in Nut November, a Cashu Hackathon.

• Join the next Bitcoin Safe Payjoin Design Call (Nov 13, 1500 UTC) with the Bitcoin Safe team.

• Spiral shared a blog post with hopes and dreams for the next 5 years of Bitcoin Design. Chime in.

• Did you see the Bitcoin For Signal campaign by Erik & friends?

• Have you seen Aldert’s presentations (one, two) on the redenomination of bitcoin?

• A new release of Bitcoin Icons is in the works, with 20+ new icons.

Seeking feedback 🗣️👂

• Yashraj spoke about payjoin UX at tabconf. Here’s the deck (open on a laptop) and a 30 min video. Share your feedback!

• Erik redesigned the UI for Cashu.me mint ratings and review. He’s looking for feedback

• Would a UI gallery of bitcoin applications be a useful tool we should build? Chime in and test the prototype.

• Conor is looking to start a campaign to promote implementation of human-readable addresses (BIP 353). Want to help out?

• Jona keeps improving his BISA project. Feedback appreciated.

• There’s a long discussion about whether the bitcoin symbol should have one or two strokes. What do you think?

Wallet updates 👜

• Christoph has started working on an Ark wallet called Arké. Follow updates here.

• Specter is looking for designers to help with the UI for their open-source hardware wallet.

• Trezor released Safe 7. Check out the behind-the-scenes making-of video.

• Cashu.me has released a major wallet update with redesigned send, receive, and onboarding experiences.

Conferences 📅

• Satsconf was last week in Brazil.

• Watch presentations from the recent Plan B Forum.

Opportunities 💡

• Ark Labs is looking for a UI/UX Designer

• Fedi is looking for a Product Designer (UI/UX)

• Pocket Bitcoin is looking for a Senior Graphic Designer

• Bitvault is looking for a Brand Designer

Everything else 😀

• Send postcards globally and pay with bitcoin

• Bitcoin Smiles continues to sponsor dental work and improve lives. You’re invited to donate.

• Bitcoin payments are now available for merchants using Square.

• Heatbit sells home miners that combo as heaters.

• Shawn Yeager created a resource for Nostr UX best practices.

• How one Zimbabwean farmer found good use of bitcoin.

• In her latest blog post, Mo discusses her plans for UX research advocacy in 2026.

• Have you seen all the projects OpenSats supports?

—

For more, visit the Bitcoin Design website and follow us.

This update is brought to you by Christoph & Mo. We’d love to hear your feedback.

Community 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

• Did you already see the recap from Presidio Bitcoin Design Week (also one from Erik) and the 5 year report?

• Bitcoin Builder Kit had its first call (recording) with a project overview and how it’s speeding up development of bitcoin applications.

• Schmidty shared a long list of ways to contribute to bitcoin.

Bitcoin design guide 🗺️

• Saunter is going to start work on a page around NWC.

• Should we use Cloudflare AI index to make the guide more easily accessible to agents?

• A new release of Bitcoin Icons is in the works. Any icons you’d like to see added?

Seeking feedback 🗣️👂

• The BitTerms team (remember them from the Designathon) is working in a V2 and looking for input.

• Erik is looking for feedback on Cashu shirt designs.

Wallet updates 👜

• A nice walkthrough of Blitz Wallet by the designer Oliver.

• Macadamia now has an iMessage extension for easily sharing ecash.

• Bitcoin-Safe release v1.5 with major UX/UI updates.

• Fedi got a design upgrade that separates community and federation interactions, based on user feedback.

Conferences 📅

• Bitchill in Próspera, Honduras is from November 18 - 25.

• Watch the live stream recordings from BTC++ Berlin (which was all about lightning).

• Mo held a UX research workshop at hack4freedom.

• BitPlebs Summit is on November 1 in Goa, India.

Opportunities 💡

• GLOK is looking for a UX/UI Designer.

• BitVault is looking for a Brand Designer.

• Ark Labs is looking for a UX/UI Designer.

Everything else 😀

• EmojiSeed is a new proposal for visualizing recovery phrases via emoji.

• The Saving Satoshi team was on The Bitcoin Layer podcast to discuss the project and bitcoin education. Also see this clip about how Saving Satosh is used to teach bitcoin tech in Waterloo, and a post about the new Vietnamese translation.

• Mo, Erik and Christoph were on the 21 in 21 podcast.

• An appeal by Matt Corallo to push hard on self-custody and decentralization as bitcoin evolves.

• Check out the proposal for UI improvements for Wallet of Satoshi.

• Many wallet websites promote having the “simplest wallet”. Is this good messaging?

• Layers is a new wallet focusing on broadly integrating various layer 2 solutions (Ark, Spark…)

• A reddit user is confused about how channel open fees work in Phoenix.

• BIT is a 256-page collectors book telling the history of bitcoin.

• Relai removed lightning from their product after not seeing user adoption.

• Erik designed a new CDK-LDK node management tool.

• Dennis created a UTXO visualizer.

• Brrr was updated with Veronika’s redesign.

• A brief discussion on Stacker News about the Bitcoin Core App project.

• Alby got a brand refresh and new website.

• Jona shared updated designs for his ₿ISA parody credit card.

• Arteepa shared photos wearing Bitcoin Design swag while DJing.

• Will orbital repair robots need bitcoin wallets?

• Participate in time2build by Breez, a hackathon around their SDK

• Rektbot9000 took home the Design Prize at BTC++ Berlin.

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For more, visit the Bitcoin Design website and follow us.

This update is brought to you by Christoph & Mo. We’d love to hear your feedback.

“…it was the best bitcoin event I’ve ever been to” - Erik

Presidio Bitcoin Design Week brought together over 100 designers, developers, and product people for the first-ever week-long bitcoin design event. The premise was simple: if bitcoin is the future of money, it needs better design. The mission: bridge Silicon Valley design talent with the bitcoin ecosystem to tackle the fundamental challenges keeping bitcoin from broader adoption.

From September 15-19, in San Francisco, participants moved from understanding bitcoin’s design problems to actively prototyping solutions. It was a colorful mix of local designers curious about bitcoin alongside seasoned builders with years of experience in the ecosystem. The format alternated between talks that framed the challenges and hands-on sessions where everyone could contribute ideas and build together.

The People We Build For

September 15

Mo and Christoph opened the week by grounding everyone in the “why.” Starting with a brief history of money, they explored how our current monetary system works for, for better or worse, for billions of people worldwide, including the unbanked, Human Rights Defenders, and those living under unstable currencies.

The evening included hands-on time with bitcoin wallets, letting attendees experience both what works and the gaps that exist in today’s software. This wasn’t theoretical design, it was about understanding the real problems that need solving.

Designing Future Payments: Stablecoins vs Bitcoin

September 16

With the foundation set, Tuesday dove into one of bitcoin’s most contentious debates: stablecoins versus bitcoin for payments.

Nick Slaney made the case for why bitcoin will be the future of payments, while Daniel Nordh argued for stablecoins. Rather than leaving it at presentations, the evening included lively audience discussion and hands-on design exercises exploring both approaches. The goal wasn’t to declare a winner, but to understand the tradeoffs and design implications of each path.

Vibe Coding with Bitcoin

September 17

A key goal for the week was to not only discuss, but actually build. Wednesday shifted into action with vibe-coding sessions—fast prototyping of functional web applications using AI-assisted development.

Mat explored building a fully functional bitcoin tip jar from scratch, while Erik demonstrated integrating bitcoin (via the Ecash protocol Cashu) into the Bitchat app (presentation slides). The sessions were interactive, with attendees coding alongside the presenters and seeing how quickly bitcoin can be integrated into modern web applications.

Bitcoin being digitally native makes it perfect for this kind of rapid prototyping, and participants left with practical insights they could build upon.

Deep Dive: The Grand Challenges of Bitcoin Design

September 18

Thursday was the week’s centerpiece with a deep dive into the fundamental design challenges that make bitcoin unique and difficult.

Christoph opened with a keynote laying out why designing bitcoin is inherently hard: irreversible transactions, complex security models, novel monetary concepts, and the tension between decentralization and ease of use.

Kyle from Cash App followed, sharing lessons from designing bitcoin experiences for millions of mainstream users. He explored the challenges of explaining bitcoin, building trust, and creating brand experiences that feel accessible rather than intimidating.

Participants then split into six workgroups, each tackling a specific design challenge. Click through to see the track intro presentations.

• Inspiring merchants to adopt bitcoin (Haley) - How do we make the value proposition clear and adoption frictionless?

• The bitcoin brand (Joshua) - Designing an open-source chip for bitcoin credit cards

• People, Products & Payment Protocols (Conor) - design payment experiences for specific real-world use cases

• Redefining bitcoin’s base unit (Mat) - Redesign how Bitcoin quantities are represented and displayed

• Bitchat (Steve) - Integrating payments directly into communication apps

• Fees (Christoph) - Making transaction fees understandable and manageable for everyday users

During lunch, we also had the opportunity to hear from several bitcoin startups located in the Presidio Bitcoin space about their projects, and provide design feedback. And we wrapped up the day with each team presenting a summary of their work to the whole group.

Deep Dive: Redesigning Silicon Valley with Bitcoin

September 19

Friday was about imagination. After four days of understanding bitcoin’s challenges, it was time to dream about what mainstream adoption could look like.

A live recording of the PBJ podcast set the stage, with the three hosts discussing the intersection of bitcoin and Silicon Valley.

Mat then issued the challenge: reimagine existing Silicon Valley companies and products with bitcoin integration. What would Uber look like with bitcoin payments? What about Airbnb, social media platforms, or productivity tools?

Ideas filled a board as sticky notes—some practical, some provocative, all thought-provoking. Teams formed around the most compelling concepts and spent the afternoon prototyping and presenting their visions.

Thank you’s

This was the first week-long, local-first, design-focused event organized by the Bitcoin Design Community, and it exceeded expectations.

Enormous thanks to Alex, Haley, and the team at Presidio Bitcoin for providing the space and handling countless organizational details. Their support made everything possible. If you ever have the opportunity to visit Presidio Bitcoin, absolutely take it.

Mo, Mat, Erik, and Christoph were the primary organizers from the Bitcoin Design Community, spending months planning and running the events themselves.

And most importantly, thank you to all the attendees for showing up, participating actively, and spending your time with us. We hope everyone made meaningful connections, learned new perspectives, and left more passionate about building the future of money.

-

Want to get involved? Both Presidio Bitcoin and the Bitcoin Design Community regularly organize events. Recent examples include the Presidio Bitcoin Quantum Summit, the Bitcoin Designathon 2025, and the BTC Prague dev/hack/day design track. Follow along on social media to learn about what’s coming next.

Community 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

• Bitcoin Design turned 5 this summer, and we are celebrating it with a 5-year anniversary website. It covers important milestones, projects, and stories, and lots more. Take a nostalgic look at what we all achieved together.

• The Presidio Bitcoin Design Week is coming up September 15 to 19 in San Francisco, where we are looking to charm local designers into checking out bitcoin.

• We had a first AI huddle call (recording). The plan is for the community to share how they use AI and learn new tools and tricks. This was the first call of our AI call series.

• We’re partnering with Dada Devs for UX/UI workshops and education.

• The foundation posted its update for the first half of 2025.

Bitcoin design guide 🗺️

• More projects adopt or experiment with the ₿-only format described here, such as Wallet of Satoshi, StashPay, and even a vending machine.

• Christoph is looking for feedback on defining essential bitcoin product categories.

• Chris built a wallet (for testnet4) based on the guide.

• How might wallet UIs change post-quantum? Check out recordings from the Presidio Bitcoin Quantum Summit, and chime in (issue).

Seeking feedback 🗣️👂

• Mat is wondering what you like about Phoenix wallet?

• Kelbs shared a concept for reallocating funds between ecash mints.

• Mo put together data in a storytelling format and is open to feedback on this way of presenting data.

Conferences and events 📅

• Yashraj shared his presentation slides about Payjoin UX challenges from BTC++.

• Btrust Dev Day is coming up on December 2nd, in Trianon Convention Centre (TCC), Port Louis, Mauritius

• Hack4Freedom is a 2-week, women-focused hackathon in Nigeria, coming up September 20.

• BitDevs Nairobi launched a bitcoin design series.

Everything else 😀

• NostrPay is a new bitcoin app for families, working its way through the App Store approval process.

• During Bitcoin Mastermind 2025, Loïc Kassamoto showed participants how to build a career as a designer through various design programs.

• Vinteum, which supports open-source bitcoin builders in Brazil, turned 3. Check out their report.

• Isa looked for input on 4 different logs for ₿itcoin Cafe.

• Bitshala Bitspace shared a recap of all of their happenings in July.

• Curious what is happening around Lightning? Check out the Lightning Labs newsletter.

• The Cornell Bitcoin Club shared research findings about why some people don’t (or don’t anymore) hold bitcoin.

• Harsh posted about his Fedimint Web Wallet project.

• Half of mobile users have at least one accessibility setting enabled. See the research by Appt.

• Nandini created an AI trailer for Saving Satoshi.

• Calle described an ecash mint as a replacement for accounting systems. What do you think?

—

For more, visit the Bitcoin Design website and follow us.

This update is brought to you by Christoph & Mo. We’d love to hear your feedback.

Community 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

• The Bitcoin Design Community has been around for 5 years and we are putting together a report to celebrate milestones and everyone’s contributions. As usual, it’s done in public, and you’re welcome to chime in. 

• We had a call with the Fediment web wallet team, see the call recording here.

• The community and Bitcoin Presidio are making good progress organizing a Design Week in September.

• We’ve got a new AI channel in the Bitcoin Design Community, feel free to chat about all things AI there. 

• The Bitcoin Design Foundation is looking to clarify the grant application process. Give feedback on these work-in-progress documents.

Bitcoin design guide 🗺️

• The contacts page now more explicitly mentions silent payment addresses.  

• Content guidelines now include a paragraph about inclusion of new protocols with little adoption.

• How can the guide be used directly or indirectly via AI? Help experiment and find out.

• An explainer for how recovery phrases are constructed has been added to the glossary. 

• Tracking on the website will remain and the issue has been closed. 

Seeking feedback 🗣️👂

• Mo is putting together a report about the UX needs of activists. Feel free to drop in comments on the report here. 

• Jsonbits posted a survey to understand accessibility needs around bitcoin wallets. 

• SalmaChan would like feedback on HongBao, a site for gifting bitcoin with customized paper wallets.

• Veronika is looking for input on a redesign of Brr (custom ecash notes for print).

• Pratik is looking for feedback on ZapTracker, a dashboard for Zaps ( micropayments via Nostr & lightning).

• Pav is curious about animating the Bitty mascot (from Here comes bitcoin). Check out the discussion.

Education 🍎

• The Bitcoin Design Community is in the process of creating an education program for UX designers, chime in on the discussion here.

• Christoph is going to move forward with iterations to the Open Design Guide.

• PenPot has just released an online course about UI design.

Conferences 📅

• Baltic Honey Badger is coming up on August 9th and 10th, in Riga.

• Bitcoin Amsterdam is happening again from November 13th to 14th.

• Tab Conf, a more technical conference, is taking place in October in Atlanta, Georgia.

Opportunities 💡

• There’s a new freelancing website where you can be paid in bitcoin. 

• Bitcoin grants lets you apply to multiple grant organizations at once. 

Everything else 😀

• The winners of Skibidi cash, a bounty to bring together bitcoin builders around brainrot meme culture, has been announced.

• Geyser organized a NWC hackathon. Congratulations to the winners.

• Erik wrote an update on his recent contributions. Right now he is working on designing a Cashu wallet for Bitchat, improving multi-nut payments on cashu.me, working with Sushant on Sovran design improvements, working with Veronika on a redesign of Cashu Brr, and later will be taking a turn at vibe coding some improvements to the Fedimint Web Wallet.

• Mat updated his one-pager about BIP-177, the proposal to redenominate bitcoin.

• Nandini wrote about her experience contributing to Saving Satoshi via Summer of Bitcoin.

• BTCMap shared their update for June.

• Tristan wrote about his journey designing a bitcoin wallet.

• Bitcoin UI is a new React library with UI components.

• Bitcoin transcripts got an update. It is a searchable archive of transcripts of bitcoin meetups, conferences, podcasts, and more.

• Check out the Spiral newsletter, which elegantly wraps complex technical bitcoin topics with a soft blanket of humour.

• Speaking of newsletters, Mo, Erik, and Christoph keep posting proof-of-work updates about their open-source contributions.

—

For more, visit the Bitcoin Design website and follow us.

This update is brought to you by Christoph & Mo. We’d love to hear your feedback.

The community organized another design track at the BTC Prague dev/hack/day, and it was a blast. There were talks on the Bitcoin Core App, Bitcoin Safe, the state of Cashu (summary), Mining UX, bias in design, and much more. New this year were a socratic discussion around bitcoin design, and a user testing session towards the end of the day, both of which were well received. Big thanks to everyone who attended, presented, organized, or chipped in otherwise.

Community 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

• We’re looking to organize a workshop series around AI, bitcoin & design. Let us know what you’re curious about.

• There’s also discussion around a more structured bitcoin & design education program. Would you like to participate in self-guided online courses?

• We had a design review call with the BTCMap team (recording, call info). They are looking for more feedback and contributors.

• The Dana Wallet team had a call (recording, call info) where they evaluated their recent user tests from the Oslo Freedom Forum.

• We ran a Design-a-Note ecash challenge during the Bitcoin Design Hackathon — then brought the community’s creations to BTC Prague. The results were a hit. Read all about them here.

• Plan₿ Biz School is currently under way. There are conversations happening around potentially arranging a design workshop. Stay tuned.

Bitcoin design guide 🗺️

• A section about the ₿-only format, based on BIP-177, was added to the Units & Symbols page.

• Help review Yashraj’s update that adds Silent Payment addresses and BOLT 12 offers to the contacts page.

Wallet updates 👜

• Sovan, the Cashu wallet, is live in the App Store.

• There’s a new Fedimint web wallet by Harsh, a Summer of Bitcoin student.

• Keith, from SeedSigner, shared their design process around recovery phrase UX.

• Ledger announced a new product for digital physical backup of your recovery phrase. 

• Winners of the Skibidi Cash bounty will be announced next week.

• The new BitBox02 Nova also works on Apple devices.

• Phoenix Wallet has a new security feature to require PIN entry for sending funds.

Everything else 😀

• Proton Wallet shared a short demo video about their accounts feature.

• Mat keeps experimenting with using AI to get more out of the Bitcoin Design Guide and UI Kit. Have you tried the Replit & Figma integration?

• BitKit shared a peek into their design files.

• Satsie and Yashraj created a zine for Silent Payments.

• Design Beyond Barriers is a new site about accessibility.

• Mo shared some tips based on her experience processing user research data via local AI models.

• Ledger announced a new recovery key product.

• Saving Satoshi is now available in Korean.

• What’s your verdict of Apple’s Liquid Glass and Google’s Material 3 Expressive design directions?

—

For more, visit the Bitcoin Design website and follow us.

This update is brought to you by Christoph & Mo. We’d love to hear your feedback.

Community 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

• Did you see that the Designathon wrapped up? If not, take a peek at the previous newsletter.

• The community conducted research at Oslo Freedom Forum. Bitcoin and Nostr have the potential to provide privacy focussed financial and communication tools for activists. We'll publish findings publicly and host developer workshops to share the insights.

• BTC Prague is coming up from June 18 to 21. Meet up at the design track during dev/hack/day and around the general conference. The aforementioned activist research and Bitcoin Core App are two of the scheduled talks.

• We had an exploratory call about how Liana could implement Payjoins (recording).

• The price for Best Design at the Bitcoin 2025 hackathon, sponsored by the Bitcoin Design Foundation, went to Arcana Seed Lodge. Check out all the projects.

• For anyone in the US, help protect your right to transact freely via Save our Wallets. There’s a bill being discussed around protecting builders of non-custodial wallets and services. 

Bitcoin design guide 🗺️

• The intro page to the Getting Started section got a rewrite. Does it read better and is it more informative now?

• The section for visual formatting of addresses was updated with a note about using fonts with clearly distinguishable characters.

• Find new t-shirt designs with bitcoin & design related taglines on the Design files page (Figma community file).

• Would you like to help create an online course around design for Plan₿ Network?

• AI knows the guide and can evaluate your design based on it. How else can we use AI?

Seeking feedback 🗣️👂

• Liana Wallet is interviewing bitcoiners around frustrations with self-custody.

• Yashraj is seeking feedback on UX challenges around Payjoin V2 (outline, Github, Stacker News).

• 0commons is a bitcoin-powered value-for-value marketplace for digital goods. Leave your feedback.

• Kelbs is looking for feedback on home screen designs for Sovrn.

• m1sterc001guy is looking for feedback on a Fedimint wallet prototype (repo).

• There is a lot of activity around bitcoin redenomination (BIP 177), removing the term satoshi as a unit. Join the conversation.

Wallet updates 👜

• An update on Cashu ecosystem developments in Q1 2025.

• Boardwalk Cash is an example for the redenomination of bitcoin units. A live example on how “1 Satoshi” can be displayed as “1 Bitcoin”.

• Wallet of Satoshi is going to release a non-custodial wallet and become available again in the US.

• Akron released a beta wallet with support for the Spaces protocol.

• Blockstream released a new wallet app. 

• Sparrow made several accessibility improvements in the 2.2.0 release.

Conferences 📅

• Catch up with the recordings and hackathon winners of the BTC++ Austin conference.

• Watch presentations of the Bitcoin Presidio hackathon finalists.

• Find a more complete list of conferences here.

Opportunities 💡

• BRAIINS is looking for a content Lead.

• Apply to the Bitshala design fellowship.

• Cowbolt is looking for a designer.

Everything else 😀

• HRF is supporting another 22 projects with grants. The Bitcoin Design Foundation is also very grateful to be receiving one of the grants. Take a look.

• Happy Bitcoin Pizza Day!

• Check out Jason’s guide to bitcoin accessibility.

• View survey results around mobile wallet usage in Japan by Diamond Hands.

• The Second team published research around how the Ark network can complement Lightning infrastructure.

• Watch the Freedom Tech track presentations from the Oslo Freedom forum.

• Watch Daniel answer 21 questions in 21 minutes.

• Read Bitcoin testing is a ghost town by AVB (also part two).

• Saving Satoshi did a workshop at the Bitcoin Conference. Have you tried it?

• See the UX of paying for burgers at the US fast-food chain Steak’n Shake.

• A guide to Robosats, for private exchange of bitcoin.

• Hear about the latest on Fedimint in this podcast.

• Read about building inclusivity into every phase of a project.

• Check out the Global State of Crypto report by Gemini.

—

For more, visit the Bitcoin Design website and follow us.

This update is brought to you by Christoph, Mo, and others. We’d love to hear your feedback.

We also had the most extensive Global Accessibility Awareness Day together with the Designathon. There were 3 accessibility calls; one, two, three. We also had 2 UX research workshops; one, two. Then after much design and play, it was time to present and submit their final projects, for which we had two live presentation calls here and here. And we partnered with ABDC on a live crit, and Bitcoin++ on an accessibility track.

Main prize winners

Choosing winners was incredibly tough this year. The quality of work was outstanding across the board, and our judges had their work cut out for them. But after much deliberation, here are the teams that took home prizes:

1st Prize: BOLT 12 Subscriptions

By Deeksha and Stephen, info, presentation

This project tackled the challenge of recurring payments in podcasting. With the BOLT 12 spec potentially bringing back subscriptions, they explored what a podcasting app would look like if fans could subscribe to their favorite creators using recurring lightning payments. It's the kind of real-world application that makes bitcoin more useful for everyday creators and their audiences.

2nd Prize: BitPass

By BitPass by fer10_m and unllamas, info, presentation, Github

BitPass is a bitcoin-native ticketing platform that combines Lightning Network payments with Nostr technology. Event organizers can create, sell, and manage tickets entirely within the bitcoin ecosystem. It's a great example of how bitcoin can tackle industries beyond store of value

3rd Prize: Sovereign Note

By V, info, presentation

This project explored innovative ways to handle Ecash notes for diverse use cases and to provide users and creators of the notes with the relevant information to create and use these notes themselves. 

4th Prize: Zeus Redesign

Timi and Tobi, info, presentation

Zeus is a mobile app for connecting to your own Lightning node. This redesign focused on creating a more welcoming visual identity, better empty states, and educational microcopy that actually explains concepts like liquidity and channels in human terms.

5th Prize: BitAble

By Margaret, info, presentation

Margaret's project addressed a crucial gap in bitcoin accessibility. BitAble is designed as an accessible bitcoin wallet experience that simplifies self-custody for people with disabilities. As Margaret put it, "Everyone deserves financial sovereignty, and design can open the door." This work shows a good example of our community's commitment to designing bitcoin for everyone.

6th Prize: BitTerms

By Lola, Umar, and Daniel, info, presentation

Bitcoin's complex language often keeps people out, and BitTerms tackles this head-on. This user-friendly glossary helps people understand bitcoin through clear, visual explanations. It's the kind of educational tool that makes bitcoin more accessible to people from all backgrounds.

Special track winners

Accessibility & Open Design: SafeBits 

By Design_r, info, presentation

This project’s goal was to tackle several ideas. It reviewed the Bitcoin Safe desktop application for accessibility practices. And it tackled self-custody guidelines for organizations, also based on Bitcoin Safe.

Ecash note design 1st price: Just another Ecash nutsnote

By Design_r, info

Ecash note design 2nd price & Crowd favorite: Sovereign Note

By V, info, presentation

Ecash note design 3rd price: Ecash Designs

By Asit, presentation

—

Special shout-out

We’d also like to give a special thank-you and shout-out to all the project submissions that did not end up winning a prize. Here they are, in alphabetical order:

Bitcoin Beauty School

By Tricia, info, video walkthrough

Bitcoin Bonsai / Beacon

By Asit, info, presentation

Bitcoin Housie

By V, info, presentation

BittyFun

By Katy, info, video walkthrough

Ecash note

By Cats

Zeus redesign

By Arjun, prototype

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If you’d like to get in touch with any of the projects, reach out in the community Discord.

Thank you to the judges

We appreciate this talented group of designers for sharing their time. 

Thanks to our sponsors

We would also like to say a huge thank you to the sponsors of the event, your support has provided the winners with a lovely gift for their work and efforts. A huge thank you to the Bitcoin Design Foundation, Blockstream, PlanB Network, Here Comes Bitcoin Store, Open Cash, and Penpot. 

Thank You

When's the next Designathon? Who knows! What we do know is that we and our participants learned a tremendous amount. Some of these projects are already evolving beyond what was presented, and we're excited to see where they go next.

The creativity and dedication we witnessed over these past weeks blew us away. Many participants didn't have designers on their teams, yet they pushed forward driven by their passion for the bitcoin ecosystem. That's the spirit that makes our community special.

To all the participants: you thought through your project ideas brilliantly and executed them with impressive skill. Whether you took home a prize or not, you contributed something valuable to the ecosystem.

We hope to see all these teams continue building and shining. We're cheering for you from the sidelines!

Our wish is for everyone involved to keep learning, building, and having fun. These projects are valuable contributions to the bitcoin ecosystem, and we hope to see them flourish.

See you in the community!

—

For more, visit the Bitcoin Design website and follow us.

This update is brought to you by Christoph & Mo. We’d love to hear your feedback.

It’s time to get creative and build together. Join us this Sunday at 9:00 UTC on Jitsi, as we kick off the Designathon, and then you’re free to tinker with your projects for the next two weeks. Got questions? Ask them in Discord.

Community 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

• The Bitcoin 2025 hackathon (global, devpost) is still on until May 20. 

• The BTC++ Austin (in-person) event is upon us, May 7-9. Jason and Sahil will provide design support.

• If you’re in San Francisco, join the Presidio Bitcoin Hackathon, May 16-17.

• BTC Prague is coming up from the 19th - 21st June, where we’re organizing the design track on dev/hack/day. 

• What do you think of these mock-ups for community t-shirt designs for use at conferences?

Bitcoin design guide 🗺️

• AI can use the guide to review your design and applications. See the discussions here and here.

• Subscriptions will be possible with BOLT 12. Discussion.

• More conversation around the proposal for only using ₿ as the unit for bitcoin, to simplify amounts & units.

• Help review an update to the Getting Started intro page.

• Fedimint is referencing the guide in a discussion around fee display.

Wallet updates 👜

• Have you tried Nunchuk Group Wallets?

• Bitcoin Core 29 was released. Get the overview via this Bitcoin Explained podcast episode.

• Bisq is looking for feedback on their plans for a mobile app. 

• The Sovran team is working on designs for account recovery.

Conferences 📅

• Bitcoin Filmfest is in Warsaw from May 22-25.

• Oslo Freedom Forum is in Oslo from May 26th - 29th. 

• Baltic Honeybadger in Riga from 9 - 10 August.

• Tab Conf in Atlanta from 13th - 16th October.

• Africa Bitcoin Conference in Mauritius from 3 - 5 December. 

Opportunities 💡

• ChaincodeLabs has a 100% college sponsorship for high school or college students. 

• Bipa is looking for a hybrid product designer near Brazil.

• JAN3 is looking for a remote freelance visual designer (Illustration & Motion).

• Ramblyn is looking for a web designer.

• Block is looking for an Open Source Design Engineer.

• Square is looking for a Principle Product Designer.

• Square is looking for a UX Researcher for the Omnichannel department.

Everything else 😀

• Listen to John Magill’s (Zaprite) journey from graphic designer to bitcoin entrepreneur on the Studio Twentyone Show. 

• Sponsor a report about Bitcoin Circular Economies by Geyser.

• Geyser introduced Launchpad to help projects find supporters.

• BTrust & African Bitcoiners are expanding their bootcamp program.

• Waye is looking for participants for research on burnout in open-source.

• EriK is working on the export token functionality for the BTCPay x Cashu plugin.

• An analysis of bitcoin wallet business models. Do you pay for your wallet?

• Christoph shared thoughts on how onboarding is about getting users comfortable with an application.

• Follow.Space has curated lists of people to follow on Nostr.

—

For more, visit the Bitcoin Design website and follow us.

This update is brought to you by Christoph & Mo. We’d love to hear your feedback.

Our second Bitcoin Designathon is happening, from May 4 - 18. It will be online and open for anyone globally to participate. A great time to explore creative ideas and design problems around bitcoin. For more info, to register, submit ideas and projects, see the website. Let’s go!

Community 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

• If you’d like to help plan or promote the Designathon, join our event planning call on Thursday. We very much appreciate your support. Other initiatives being organized:

  • UX Research @ Oslo Freedom Forum

  • Design Week Presidio

  • Design track @ BTC Prague dev/hack/day

• The Bitcoin 2025 Hackathon started on Monday. It’s 1.5 months long, so you have plenty of time to participate. The Bitcoin Design Foundation is sponsoring a design prize.

• If you’re in Austin on May 7-9, join the Bitcoin++ conference and hackathon. The foundation is also sponsoring a design prize there.

• There are 8 design projects in this year’s Summer of Bitcoin program. Take a look. Participants are currently preparing their proposals.

Bitcoin design guide 🗺️

Have you used the guide? We’re doing research on how it’s being used, what’s working well, and may need to be added. If you have feedback or would like to participate in an interview, reach out.

Seeking feedback 🗣️👂

• Bitcoin-Safe Desktop wallet is seeking users and feedback.

• Bitcoin UX research toolkit needs to improve and grow! What else you’d add?

• How do you like the BitPlebs bitcoiner faction banners?

• Does TikTok have good UX for live streams? Discuss.

Wallet updates 👜

• ZEUS wallet and BTCpay Server (see Erik’s designs) will integrate Cashu. Until then, get these Telegram and Signal Ecash sticker.

• Misty Breez is a new liquid wallet with lightning support.

• Eric has been helping to improve the design of Sovran, together with Sushant as part of the Bitshala x Bitcoin Design Fellowship. They designed UI/UX updates for the send, receive, onboarding, transaction details, and more.

Conferences 📅

• Catch up with talk recordings from the MIT Bitcoin Expo.

• FOSS Backstage 2025 talk recordings are available, with some great talks on design.

• Bitcoin Film Fest, is happening May 22-25 in Warsaw, PL.

• ATL BitLab is organizing the Battle of the Minehackers Hackathon on June 7 - July in Atlanta, USA (online participation welcome).

Opportunities 💡

• Waye.dev is looking for a brand and marketing designer.

• The Adopting Bitcoin conference team is hunting for a passionate video creator.

• 21bitcoin is looking for a remote graphic designer, ideally in Austria.

• Bipa is looking for a hybrid product designer near Brazil.

• JAN3 is looking for a remote freelance visual designer (Illustration & Motion).

• There is a 50k sats bounty to refactor HUSZONEGY.world to a SEO-friendly website.

Everything else 😀

• Studio Twentyone posted their March and April newsletters.

• Mo reflects on The Human Side of Bitcoin Adoption.

• Read about the history of Freebanking and how it relates to Ecash.

• Listen to Conor and Stephen speak with Stephan Livera about fixing bitcoin payment UX.

• Watch an interview with Steven Roose about Ark, a self-custodial layer 2 based on UTXO sharing.

• IxTech shared a design for a new BitAxe cover.

For more, visit the Bitcoin Design website and follow us.

This update is brought to you by Christoph & Mo and Paperpsych. We’d love to hear your feedback.

Community 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

• The Proton Wallet team walked through their design and gathered feedback in a review call. Check out the recording.

• The Galoy team showcased their new product in the Bitcoin-banking infrastructure space: Lana. Follow along with the call recording.

• Plenty of community events are in the works for 2025. Want to help plan or participate, join this call? Here’s what’s coming up:

  • Designathon 2

  • Accessibility Day

  • BTC Prague design track

  • Summer of Bitcoin

  • UX Research at Olso Freedom Forum

  • Design Week in San Francisco

• The first ever Bitcoin UX Bootcamp for South America has wrapped up (photos). Participants had 3 calls which you can watch here, here and here.

• The first round of iterations on the Open Design Guide is complete! Check it out, and feel free to share feedback. Eriol and Christoph also presented the project at FOSS Backstage.

• Bitcoin Core App designers are working on the basic send flow designs.

Bitcoin design guide 🗺️

• Watch Tristan live-code the Nummus bitcoin wallet and regularly refer to the guide in process (first time around 25 minutes in).

• Looking for ways to contribute?

  • Help add personas and use cases for activists.

  • Create self-custody guidelines for entities like governments, companies and nonprofits.

  • Design UX for quantum-secure private keys.

  • Add guidance for test transactions.

  • Add info about address poisoning attacks.

  • Or suggest your own improvements.

Seeking feedback 🗣️👂

• What do you think of this new logo for the OpenCash Association?

• Bitflio would like feedback on their social media banners.

• How might users pay for lightning liquidity? Discuss.

Wallet updates 👜

• ZEUS 0.10 introduces extension of channel leases, amongst other features.

• The cashu.me mint information page got a redesign by Erik.

• Flash Wallet Beta is a new self-custodial wallet for businesses.

Education 🍎

• The Bitcoin Journey is a beginner friendly and free online course.

• Area Bitcoin is a South American online school with various educational resources (like their Youtube channel).

• Computer-science students at Laurier University played Saving Satoshi during Bitcoin Developer Day.

Conferences 📅

• March 28-30 | Beechworth, Australia - Bitcoin Bush Bash is an open gathering for bitcoiners

• April 3-6 | Dallas, Texas – BitBlockBoom for builders

• April 11-13 | Bedford, UK - CheatCode for protecting your wealth against inflation

• April 24-27 | Kreuzlingen, Switzerland - Swiss Bitcoin Conference for Business and Corporates

Opportunities 💡

• Want to help with Bitcoin live stream graphics/animations? More info.

• Bitcurrent is looking for a Product Manager.

• Ramblyn is looking for a Web UX/UI Designer (Remote, Part-time).

• Lava.xyz is looking for a Founding Designer.

• Plan₿.network is looking for a Senior UX/UI Designer.

• Orqestra.io is looking for a Frontend Engineer with a strong design background.

• BOB is looking for a Senior Product Designer.

• Bitrefill is looking for a Graphic Designer & Marketing Performance.

Everything else 😀

• Studio Twentyone sat down with Mia White for a new episode. Also see the latest March edition of their newsletter.

• A design contest for brrr.gandlaf.com might be coming up.

• Check out the hackathon winners at BTC++ Floripa.

• Should we allow quantum recovery of bitcoin? This article argues that we should not.

• A history of free banking and how it leads to ecash.

• Read notes on the Bitkey security model and how FROST might provide benefits.

• New research on “What’s Driving Bitcoin Adoption in 2025?” by River

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For more, visit the Bitcoin Design website and follow us.

This update is brought to you by Christoph & Mo and Paperpsych. We’d love to hear your feedback.