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Introducing Foundation Devices: a new Bitcoin hardware company

We believe Bitcoin and decentralized technologies will empower the individual, leading to a better world where people control their own data and their own money. This is the dream for our industry; this is the reason why so many of us have chosen to start or join Bitcoin companies. We seek to eliminate the need for trusted third parties – like banks, cloud providers, and even governments – in order to make our systems more efficient and more accessible. And we seek to move power away from central points of failure to the edge; to the people.

As we build our industry from the ground up, we must remember this principle. We must build products and services that enable individual sovereignty.

We are concerned that today’s most mature Bitcoin and decentralized tech companies are the most centralized and opaque. Coinbase provides a custodial exchange. Blockchain.com provides a hosted wallet. Bitmain is a web of secrecy. Our industry’s biggest players provide trusted exchanges, trusted wallets, trusted mining pools, trusted lending services, trusted nodes – and even trusted hardware wallets! (Yes Ledger, we are referring to you.)

Have we forgotten the point of it all? Have we forgotten why we are all here?

So many of the Bitcoin products and services that successfully enable sovereignty – like Electrum, Wasabi, Samourai, Nodl, and Coldcard – are fantastic offerings that lack consumer-oriented UX. While we love and use these products, they will never “cross the chasm” to the land of mass consumer adoption.

We worry that as Bitcoin and decentralized tech reach the next phase of adoption, the vast majority of consumers will become dependent on centralized providers. We will have succeeded at creating a different financial system with different intermediaries. But we will have failed at empowering the individual and building a new Internet.

This is why we started Foundation – to make beautifully designed, open source hardware for Bitcoin and the decentralized Internet. To bring great design and UX to hardware wallets, nodes, and more. To allow mass consumers to securely use and store Bitcoin while maintaining their sovereignty. To help our industry cross the chasm while staying true to our founding ideals.

We call this open hardware. And we are excited to bring it to the world.

Our Mission

Foundation Devices strives to empower humankind – to make Bitcoin and decentralized tech accessible to each and every individual in order to build a new era of sovereignty, ownership, and privacy. Our products are the foundation of a better, sovereign Internet.

Our Values
  • Foundation offers best-in-class security and privacy via openness. No walled gardens; no closed source engineering. We are the antithesis of existing tech companies.
  • Foundation products are beautiful, intuitive, and approachable. Bitcoin and decentralized tech already have a steep learning curve; our products do not.
  • Foundation gives sovereignty to individuals and businesses. We empower you to take ownership and control of your money and your data.
  • Foundation products reflect our optimism about the future. We are building a better Internet based on a better form of money. Our products feel positive, aspirational, and a bit sci-fi.
Next Steps

This summer, Foundation will launch a new Bitcoin hardware wallet that provides the same security model as Coldcard while offering a beautiful, intuitive hardware and UI design. From day one our hardware wallet will be compatible with popular desktop and mobile applications. We will open source all circuit schematics, design files, and firmware – and we will assemble exclusively in the USA.

Over the next several weeks Foundation will release blog posts discussing the importance of open source hardware, diving into hardware challenges faced by our industry, and providing more details about our upcoming hardware wallet.