Lite.IM Adds Bitcoin To Facebook―Before Facebook Does

Lite.IM, a crypto wallet that is integrated with three different messaging channels, has announced that it is adding support for Bitcoin. Since its release in August, the wallet has offered support for Litecoin, Ethereum, and its native token, ZTX—and now the biggest coin is finally arriving on the platform.

Needless to say, support for Bitcoin is a vital part of any multi-coin wallet, and its addition could increase the popularity of Lite.IM significantly. The project revealed the addition of the coin earlier this week on Twitter:

Ready for one more holiday gift?

Now you can use Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and SMS to send, receive and manage…BITCOIN!

Get started with $BTC $LTC $ETH and $ZTX now

Telegram: https://t.co/wgMtDKEfl5
FB Messenger: https://t.co/NXJdKlhagY
SMS (US/CN): 760-548–3460 pic.twitter.com/UbJpdUgmPS

— Lite.IM (@liteim_official) December 28, 2018

How Lite.IM Works

Lite.IM is essentially a crypto wallet that allows you to make transactions via Facebook Messenger, Telegram, or SMS. To use the wallet, you simply send commands to a chatbot, which performs transactions on your behalf. The chatbot can send crypto, receive crypto, and display your balance and transaction history.

This approach requires Lite.IM to store some data centrally: it manages your private keys on your behalf, which is a security risk. However, it encrypts these keys with a password that only you have access to. There are more secure ways of storing crypto, but if you rely heavily on messaging tools, Lite.IM may be quite convenient.

Suggested Reading : Learn about our recommended Litecoin wallets.

Crypto and Social Networks

Lately, many social networks and chat apps have been making an effort to add support for cryptocurrency. Thanks to their existing user bases, these platforms often have a head start when it comes to building a crypto product. Platforms such as LINE, Kik, and Ask.fm have all introduced crypto wallets or tools in the past — although these are sometimes only compatible with a native token.

Mainstream social networks have been more hesitant to add support for cryptocurrency, and this hesitation has given projects like Lite.IM an opportunity to provide their own solution. That said, Facebook has been taking steps toward entering the crypto world, and recent news suggests that the company will release a crypto payment platform in the near future.

Although Lite.IM is far less popular than anything that Facebook could conceivably release, it does raise an interesting possibility. In theory, a major company could release a successful crypto wallet for Facebook before Facebook itself does. However, the potential of these tools is limited: a text-entry wallet in the style of Lite.IM is probably less user-friendly than any official Facebook product.

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