Wallet Update 0.98.87 - Welcome new international users, and saying adieu to fiat currency

We are very pleased to roll out Samourai Wallet update 0.98.87

apk hash sha-256 of version 0.98.87 :

861c5b709173fbaab897a11d2991c6c4112a633173ed7b6d4a766257a9914f91

Translations

We firstly want to shout out the fantastic Samourai community for their drive to provide high quality localisation for Samourai Wallet and Sentinel. It is because of their determination and support of our mission to create a more private bitcoin that Samourai Wallet is now available in 12 languages (see the full list at the bottom of this post) with French and Chinese added in this release. These aren’t generic computer translations, these are translations by actual bitcoin users from the local region, and as such are extremely high quality and contextual.

We have already seen the side effects with installs increasing dramatically from international user bases with a native translation, usually in places where they need Samourai the most.

Farewell fiat

“We believe it is fundamental that our existing and future users understand that when they transact within the Bitcoin network, when they participate in the Bitcoin economy, they are transacting with the token native to that network, BTC, and nothing else.”

In 2015 when we first launched Samourai Wallet, we reasoned that a fiat based conversion rate would be a convenient feature for users who wished to have a rough idea of what their BTC stash was worth in fiat currency at any given time. We said “users aren’t ready” to give up fiat in the wallet, and we ended up including what we called the “Street Price” - the fiat conversion rate as provided by exchanges and services without KYC/AML requirements - and left it at that.

In 2017 we noticed a disturbing trend within the wider community. Many news outlets, data providers, prominent persons, and innocent users started to refer to bitcoin transactions in USD terms instead of BTC terms. Prominent altcoin proponent Roger Ver noted to his 500k Twitter followers that “TX fees SKYROCKET to $55/TX”, he of course knows better and was maliciously spreading propaganda to further his agenda, but the damage was done. Since then we have noticed many bitcoin users innocently noting their wallet balance, amounts sent, and miner fees in fiat currency instead of BTC. We spent many hours a week in our support channels explaining to confused and concerned users why they had 8 USD yesterday and 7 USD today. We reasoned that “Users aren’t ready” to give up thinking in fiat terms, and with education they would eventually change.

We are now nearing the end of 2018 and realize that users will never be ready. Thinking in fiat currency terms is familiar, you likely interact with it all the time. This is precisely the reason that within the context of a Bitcoin wallet it is a crutch. We have made the decision that as of version 0.98.87 to remove that crutch. All fiat currency conversions have been removed from Samourai Wallet. We understand this may inconvenience some, it may even be enough to cause us to lose some users, but we believe it is fundamental that our existing and future users understand that when they transact within the Bitcoin network, when they participate in the Bitcoin economy, they are transacting with the token native to the Bitcoin network, BTC, and nothing else.

We have decided to keep fiat currency conversion within the Sentinel Watch Only app, as independent merchants who frequently use the app and other use cases require the use of a currency conversion function.

Hello satoshi

The smallest unit of bitcoin is called a ‘satoshi’ or ‘sat’. 1 sat is equal to 0.00000001 BTC. When you tap your balance in your Samourai Wallet instead of the fiat currency conversion your wallet will convert to display in satoshi units.

Full list of supported languages and their translator(s)

Brazilian Portuguese (Rayserzor)

Bulgarian (Relaxo143)

Chinese (rbensberg)

French (deBeauvoir)

German (michaelWuensch)

Indonesian (eb-ina)

Italian (LifeIsPizza)

Portuguese (ric2b)

Russian (engenegr,nvyo)

Spanish (eMaringolo)

Turkish (yilmzfurkan)

Thank You

Join our Telegram and Follow Us on Twitter to keep up to date on development and to receive help from the very helpful community.