Eco, a fintech wallet app built atop crypto has announced a significant pivot. Although the Eco app is currently a custodial solution, the company is moving toward self-custody—thereby putting the spotlight on its second product, the non-custodial Beam wallet.
“Building custodial crypto products just doesn’t make any sense,” Andy Bromberg, CEO of Eco and Beam, told Decrypt, so they are doubling down on the “truly crypto side of things.”
The reasons are twofold, he explained.
Given that Eco is a U.S.-only consumer focused product, the country’s relentless regulatory clampdown around custodial products “is brutal,” Bromberg said. He pointed to Coinbase’s lawsuit and Revolut shutting down its crypto features as only two examples on a long list of the U.S.’s anti-crypto approach.
Bromberg said “it has been a year” for custodial platforms–highlighting FTX’s collapse–and that the current environment means they are “playing with ankle weights.”
He told Decrypt that they will be slowly deprecating features as the year winds down, with no plans in the future to offer custodial options for their customers.
The unexpected decision favors the company’s Beam wallet, launched in late July.
Although Beam has a Web2 feel, it utilizes Web3 technology under the hood. Leveraging account abstraction—an Ethereum upgrade that makes sending crypto as easy as sending emails—the wallet lives atop layer-2 rollup Optimism.
Beam also taps in Coinbase’s Base network–a company that Bromberg reckons also understands the vision for a true crypto future. The product, according to its CEO, ammased 80,000 in the first two months–with impressive organic growth out of Indonesia, Nigeria, and Vietnam, he said.
For Bromberg, the technology underlying Beam means the future can finally come to fruition.
Backed by some heavyweight investors such as Andreessen Horowitz and Kevin Durant, Bromberg said they were surprised but supportive of the decision. “They are realizing the same opportunity we are,” he said, that “as of this year we can build the original vision of crypto.”
Eco’s head honcho wants to make it clear that his company never intended to become a traditional fiat-based bank. His dream is to see a world of decentralized currencies, like his company’s Eco currency, calling upon the rest of the industry to “wake up.”
“If the future is custodial, we failed,” he concluded.
