Dear Coin Backers,
First and foremost, we want to apologize to each and every one of you. We
are building Coin for you and are extremely disappointed with ourselves that
we made some of you unhappy with us. We want to earn your trust again.
We apologize for our lack of transparency and clarity in our communications
to you. You, as our valuable backers, should have been the first to know
about all product updates. We honestly thought we could make our timeline.
We were overly optimistic. The San Francisco Bay Area Coin Beta made it
evident that we should conduct a larger nationwide Coin Beta. We need your
help with testing nationwide, but realize that this is not a cost for you to
bear. Therefore, we will run a nationwide Coin Beta for no cost to Coin
Beta Backers ($0) and increase the number of Coin Beta devices by 50% to 15,
000. We’ll do our best to grow this number over time. To clarify, your
spot in the Coin Beta program is determined by your pre-order date,
regardless of whether you opt-in with the iOS or Android app. We feel
responsible to the commitment each of you has given to us by backing Coin
and so we haven’t spent even one dollar of the crowd funding campaign. All
our efforts and production has been supported by equity dollars.
Coin Beta was a hard decision but important step as we want to deliver the
device we all expect and nothing less. Getting Coin to work with thousands
of different card readers of different makes, models and regions is not easy
and that’s why we need the help of an extended beta team.
We are truly sorry that the first generation Coin is not ready when we said
it would. Our team has been working hard day/night and weekends since May
2012 in an attempt to deliver Coin to you on time and while we are close, we
are not at the finish line. We have achieved ~0.84 mm form factor with e-
ink screen and bluetooth low energy. We even found a button that has a
tactile touch so you can feel feedback every time you press the button on
Coin. Coin swipes successfully in 85% of the locations we visit. Our
hardware team is focused on the remaining 15%.
With Coin Beta, we will validate compatibility nationwide and improve
usability. Meanwhile, we’ll keep a focus on growing our manufacturing
capabilities and are confident that we will deliver high-quality first
generation Coins to you all.
We promise to do better with our transparency and updates to backers. We
promise to keep working hard to deliver you a great product. We value your
honest feedback, good or bad; and we are always listening.
Sincerely,
Kanishk and the whole Coin team