SatoshiLabs

Announcement

Vexl Foundation Launched by SatoshiLabs

June 8, 2023

3 min read

SatoshiLabs, the pioneering innovator behind the world’s first hardware wallet, Trezor, today introduced the Vexl Foundation at the BTC Prague conference. Backed by SatoshiLabs’ co-founders, Marek Palatinus and Pavol Rusnák, and with Lea Petrášová, CEO of Vexl.it, appointed as president. The foundation champions personal and financial freedoms, asserting that without the freedom to transact, all other rights lose their meaning, reflecting bitcoin’s original purpose as a decentralized peer-to-peer currency.

The Vexl Foundation is committed to restoring financial power to the people, breaking free from institutional constraints and excessive regulations. It firmly believes that technology should serve as a tool for empowerment, not control, with everyone having the right to free choice, self-determination, and privacy. This stance is a critical response to KYC (Know Your Customer) practices that have introduced unwanted complexity and risk for users, occasionally leading to security breaches and unwanted exposure of precious private data.

Alongside its launch, the Vexl Foundation has released the Financial Tyranny Index (FTI). The FTI is a comprehensive tool that measures the extent of statist interventions in the financial space. These include parameters such as the growth of the money supply, the imposition of cash limits, the advent of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), and the overall tax burden. Interestingly, the initial findings of the FTI reveal that many of the world’s Western democracies, including France, Belgium, Canada, and the Netherlands, are among the top 20 countries with the highest levels of financial state control. This innovative index is designed to challenge and highlight these escalating impositions on our financial freedom.

At the core of the Vexl Foundation’s mission is Vexl, their mobile app. Vexl provides a simple, private, and secure platform for peer-to-peer Bitcoin transactions, operating without KYC or institutional interference.

“Vexl isn’t just an application, it’s the embodiment of our vision for financial autonomy. We’re dedicated to a future where technology empowers, and financial freedom equates to choice, privacy, and control,”

states Lea Petrášová.

The board of the Vexl Foundation includes Lea Petrášová, Marek Palatinus, Pavol Rusnák, Josef Tětek, and Grafton Clark. This team brings together a diverse range of experiences and perspectives, underpinning the foundation’s mission and vision.

“As we journey further through the digital age, we’re witnessing a concerning centralization of control,”

Marek Slush Palatinus acknowledges.

“We need to revisit the principles bitcoin was founded upon to direct power back to individuals. The Vexl Foundation is our step towards that change.”

Open to collaboration with other organizations and individuals who share the vision of a free and open financial world, the Vexl Foundation launches today. Backed by donations and guided by the strategic wisdom of the SatoshiLabs team, the foundation is poised to inspire a significant shift in our perception and interaction with digital finance, inviting everyone to step into the realm of financial autonomy.

“Join us on this journey towards a more open financial world,”

Rusnák invites.

For more details on this groundbreaking initiative, visit the Vexl Foundation’s website: https://www.vexl.foundation/

Grafton Clark

Spokesperson

Share brilliance or ask a question.

Reach out

The word on the street

View all news

John Sirianni to scale up Tropic Square as new CEO

Tropic Square

2 min read

Tropic Square, designers of transparent and auditable secure chip solutions, welcomes John Sirianni as Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Sirianni leads the company to scale up as they approach the pre-production tape out of their flagship product, TROPIC01, this year.

With more than two decades in the semiconductor and cybersecurity industries, Sirianni brings his knowledge and expertise to lead Tropic Square to global scale. His previous experience includes embedded systems security consultation, strategic commercialization, and leading international deep-tech scale ups.

John Sirianni shares his vision for the company, stating The engineering staff has crafted an industry leading open-hardware and auditable security chip, which enables device design teams to verify advanced security functions as they require.  Now it’s time to make it generally available for security sensitive device designers.  Device developers of AI-IoT edge devices, gaming & A/R devices, autonomous systems, M2M payment systems, advanced hardware authenticators are in need of open, transparent, and auditable cryptographic processing. Security through Transparency is what we are about at our core.

This year, Tropic Square is on route for the pre-production of TROPIC01, a transparent and auditable secure cryptographic coprocessor. Under Sirianni’s leadership and guidance, the team is eager to bring their advanced cryptographic coprocessor chip TROPIC01 to the wider market, to address the growing demand for secure hardware devices.

“I’m super excited to have John on board. We have been very product development focused and now it is the time to advance the business side of our operations. I’m looking forward to working with customers from a broader market, and showing them that there is an alternative to security by obscurity. They can have cars now, instead of just faster horses. Offering this chip to the initial customers will also give us valuable feedback, so we can further refine our product to meet market needs” says Jan Pleskac, CTO.

-

About Tropic Square

Tropic Square is a private company founded in 2020 as a response to the need for open architecture secure element chips. We develop and produce secure semiconductor device solutions that enable the auditability of its security implementations. Our chips and IP are tested by experts in the open source community and made available for community use. Tropic Square develops and produces auditable chips that meet the high security requirements of our customer’s design teams. 

For more information, visit tropicsquare.com

Trezor now available in Spanish, French and German

Trezor

2 min read

Trezor’s introduction of world languages embodies company’s commitment to broadening access to crypto security

Trezor, the original bitcoin hardware wallet company, today introduces Spanish, French and German language services for its market-leading cold-storage devices and its cryptocurrency management app, Trezor Suite

The availability of Trezor’s leading crypto technologies in three world languages, alongside the existing English version, embodies the company’s commitment to helping as many people as possible to enjoy the freedom, financial self-sovereignty and utility of cryptocurrencies. Trezor will also launch Czech language services in April for the benefit of users in its home market, one of the world’s leading Bitcoin hubs.   

With Spanish spoken by 599 million people worldwide, French by 274 million and German by 170 million – more than a billion people in total — the introduction of these languages to Trezor’s products and services echoes its goal of playing a key role in onboarding the next billion cryptocurrency users. 

Matěj Žák, Trezor’s Chief Executive Officer, said: “From the outset, our mission at Trezor has been to extend access to Bitcoin to as wide an audience as possible by enabling people to buy, manage and store it as simply and securely as possible. Enabling more people to use Trezor services in their preferred languages is an important part of delivering on that promise.”  

The price of bitcoin has once again recently reached an all time high, an event that is likely to encourage more cryptocurrency enthusiasts worldwide to explore the merits of self-custody. The collapse of high-profile crypto businesses in recent years highlighted the risks for the public of holding their cryptocurrencies on centralised exchanges – a risk encapsulated in the phrase, ‘not your keys, not your coins’. Making Trezor devices, firmware and the app available in Spanish, French, German and Czech will ease the path to self-custody for crypto owners who are less confident in English. 

The new language services will be available on the Trezor Safe 3, the entry-level hardware wallet for crypto newcomers and novices, on its flagship touch-screen Model T, and on the Trezor Suite management app. 

To optimise security and give users peace of mind, new Trezor devices arrive without firmware installed so that customers can be confident that their hardware wallets have not been tampered with. Users’ preferred language option will apply on the intuitive yet powerful crypto management app and also on their new device. Existing users can also change their language preferences for one of the world languages on Trezor Suite. 

Trezor will release the new language capabilities initially as a Beta version that will be continuously refined. 

-

About Trezor

Trezor is the original bitcoin hardware wallet company, founded in 2013. It pioneered the development of the self-custody of crypto assets, empowering individuals with an open-source device that enables anyone to easily and securely hold cryptocurrencies.

Trezor has expanded to offer a whole ecosystem of easy-to-use both hardware and software  products that help protect users - from crypto novices to crypto experts. In 2023, the company launched its Trezor Academy initiative which educates grassroots communities across the African continent on safe participation in the bitcoin ecosystem. Trezor is part of SatoshiLabs, a technology holding company with various interests in crypto and bitcoin companies.

Trezor Suite is now live!

Trezor

2 min read

Trezor Suite is a new desktop application from SatoshiLabs, producer of the original hardware wallet Trezor. This application complements the most secure way of storing cryptocurrencies and adds yet another layer to people's cryptocurrency experience.

Security first

Trezor has created many security features that have been adopted as the industry standards for safe handling of bitcoin. Trezor Suite is adding to this with its easy to use app that helps battle one of the most painful troubles out there - phishing attacks. Using a desktop application provides isolation from cloned sites and malicious links, and the software build can be independently verified unlike a website. Another benefit is that a desktop app is capable of implementing far more powerful features than its browser-based counterpart.

Trezor Suite onboarding screen

“We understand that using cryptocurrency every day makes people vulnerable to certain scams and attacks. An application on your desktop or mobile device that you have thoroughly checked and approved provides a good solution. But we wanted to do it right and also deliver features that empower hardware wallet users and bring them closer to the future of bitcoin use.” Matěj Žák, Head of Product at SatoshiLabs

More on security: Trezor Suite: Security made simple

Usability for wider adoption

Trezor Suite's new design introduces an easy onboarding process for those new to hardware wallets and the app is complete with a convenient straight-to-custody exchange service from Invity.io. These and many other user-focused features make the whole experience of using bitcoin accessible to everybody. Being able to compare offers from many different exchanges when selling, buying or exchanging cryptocurrencies brings a new level of transparency, with the added benefit of each transaction being secured by Trezor, driving mass adoption and ensuring self-custody. The brand-new onboarding process in this public release of Trezor Suite makes sure new users understand all the key steps involved in securing their assets: it provides a walkthrough of creation and backup of recovery seeds, setting a strong PIN, and using passphrase effectively to segregate coins and protecting Trezors from physical attacks.
Along with the newly-introduced Learn & Discover reference manual, Trezor Suite is focused on making sure every user gets the most out of their hardware wallets while avoiding the costly mistakes many have made in the past.

More on usability: Trezor Suite: the easy way to use Bitcoin

Focus on privacy

Trezor Suite is the first hardware wallet application that offers advanced privacy features in a form that is easy for anyone to use. Privacy is often a secondary focus for those building on Bitcoin, as the priority is to ensure there is robust infrastructure in place for Bitcoin as sound money. To make it easier to protect one's identity, Trezor Suite packages privacy tools in a way that even non-technical users can take advantage of them. By downloading Trezor Suite, sophisticated features like the Tor switch, Locktime, Discreet mode, and more, can be turned on in a single click. With many other privacy features in development, Trezor Suite will help every cryptocurrency user offset the risks of losing control over their private data.

More on privacy: Trezor Suite: Privacy made easy

Feature Highlights
  • Buy, Sell, and Exchange crypto with Invity.io - Connect to noncustodial exchange providers that offer the best rates, the most local payment methods, and the most effective support all in a single location. Invity's straightforward comparison tool allows users to buy, sell, exchange, and learn about digital currencies with ease so they never feel lost in the quickly changing world of crypto
  • Anonymous mode via Tor - At the flick of a switch, benefit from an anonymized global network that will obscure your connection by relaying it through servers distributed around the world
  • Dark mode - requested by community and delivered from Trezor with love
  • Onboarding - making it quicker and easier to get started securely using your wallet
  • Discrete mode - obscures sensitive data on-screen, so no one can peek over your shoulder
  • RBF - replace by fee for Bitcoin transactions allows users to increase the fee of transactions even if it was already broadcast

Coming soon
  • CoinJoin
  • Bitcoin full node
  • Mobile App
  • Recurring buy crypto savings account

See our plans for Trezor Suite in the Road Map. Check-in to Trezor Suite here.


Invity & Swan Bitcoin break down barriers to Bitcoin with automated savings in Trezor

Invity

2 min read

From the Genesis Stage of the Bitcoin 2022 conference, Invity.io, provider of the in-wallet trading platform for Trezor hardware wallets, and Swan Bitcoin, a prominent Bitcoin onramp, announced a new partnership to bring recurring, direct-to-custody Bitcoin purchases to Trezor wallets. Automated purchasing within a cold wallet is the most accessible way for non-technical users to start saving value with Bitcoin while maintaining personal control over their coins from the very beginning.

“The key to Bitcoin's future is to welcome people who are currently intimidated by cryptocurrencies. But we've found that new users continually worry over two things: finding the perfect time to enter the market and keeping their Bitcoin safe. This integration solves both”

Pavol "Stick" Rusnák, co-founder of Trezor Company.

“Bitcoin must be for everyone, especially in this age of runaway inflation. But not everyone is willing or able to contribute a lump sum to a new investment. By offering new users a straightforward way to buy Bitcoin in the amount they want and on their schedule, anyone can benefit from dollar-cost averaging while keeping their investment as secure as possible.”

Stephan Livera, Managing Director of Swan Bitcoin

Recurring Bitcoin purchases are facilitated by Invity, which integrated Swan Bitcoin's API into the free Trezor Suite app, the coin management platform for Trezor hardware wallets. In the Trezor Suite Trade section, a "Save into Bitcoin" button opens a specially designed minimalist interface in a click. Users then fine-tune the amount of Bitcoin to purchase and how often in a way that suits their personal budget. A linked bank account converts US dollars to Bitcoin automatically, and the purchased coins are sent directly to the user's non-custodial Trezor hardware wallet. This eliminates both exposure to vulnerable custodial solutions and manual, fee-incurring steps to move purchased coins to self-custody.

“Investing is a mental process for the long term and the only way to protect and build wealth over the long term. A completely self-managed asset like Bitcoin held on a hardware wallet is vital to creating an investment portfolio for the twenty-first century, and the meeting of our three companies makes this a reality for anyone”

Štěpán Uherík, CEO of Invity and CFO of Trezor.

Automated Bitcoin purchases powered by Swan Bitcoin and Invity will be enabled in the May 2022 update of the Trezor Suite. Swan is only available to people over eighteen years of age with a valid government ID and valid US bank account; this service is not available to residents of New York state. Invity is in talks to bring automated purchases to European users in the coming months.

About Swan Bitcoin

Swan Bitcoin is dedicated to helping the next billion people understand Bitcoin and what it represents for our future. Swan produces high quality Bitcoin education and takes pride in excellent, accessible customer service. Swan.com is the best way to accumulate Bitcoin with recurring and instant buys. The Private Client Services division helps high net worth individuals and entities build generational wealth around the world. Swan's Advisor Services platform is the easiest and most secure way for financial advisors to provide their clients with direct exposure to actual Bitcoin. For more information, visit Swan.com.