Preparing to use the fastest, easiest, lowest barrier bitcoin solution
Our goal at CoinOS is to be the fastest, easiest, lowest barrier solution to use bitcoin in the world. In September, CoinOS will be 10 years old(!), and I believe we still hold this title.
This article is going to presume you already have bitcoin, and want to use it, or you’re a business person and want to receive it.
This article is simply intended to walk you through the first screen one sees when they go to https://coinos.io for that first time and demonstrate how it should take anywhere from 15 seconds to a single click to be able to use CoinOS for the very first time:
You can see on the screenshot above there are 4 options:
Sign in (this one should be obvious) if you have an account already, simply put in your username and password, and you’re good to go!
Today we’re going to walk through the next three options.
Use Anonymously
If you click “Use anonymously” you will see a small pop-up modal on the home screen that says something like:
Welcome satoshi-dd744fb8! Your password is ‘password’
What happens when you clicked the link is we dynamically assigned you a username of satoshi-$string where $string is a series of random numbers and letters that are unique to you. We also default the password to password so it’s easy to remember. This is a fully functioning account, you’re ready to send and use bitcoin sats as you wish. Do note those, if someone guesses, obtains, or sees your username, they can use it to login themselves by simply using “password” as the password. Thus, if you take any single action after logging in anonymously, your next step should be to change your password on the settings page so that when you receive some bitcoin, one can’t simply steal your sats by knowing your username and the simple, default “password” password. Don’t forget to document your username somewhere secure as well, as you likely won’t remember it in a week after it being generated for you.
Register an account
This is my recommended first step to any new user, as you can create any username you like, and it will be more likely you remember your username this way, than if you are assigned a random string of characters as your username. The only two steps here are creating a username and creating a password, so it can’t get much easier. Make sure to store them in something secure like KeePass.
Sign in with LNURL
As soon as you click this, we will dynamically assign you a QR code to scan with your camera, or a unique LNURL followed by a “copy” button so you can paste it elsewhere
This option pre-supposes that you already have a lightning wallet that also supports LNURL. From that wallet, you can scan the QR code or paste the string, and we’ll assign you a username based on your public key — logging in a single click, doesn’t get faster or easier than that!
You can change both your username and password in settings.
You can see a demo of this in action by watch the first minute of the LNURL demo video.
As you can see, there’s no faster or easier way to use bitcoin. You don’t need to go through any privacy invasive American app stores like Apple or Google Play, you don’t need to download and install anything.
All you need to use bitcoin for the first time with CoinOS is a web browser, a data/internet connection, and up to 15 seconds of your time.
