A Quick Bitcoin Guide
Since we adopted Bitcoin into our business in 2021, more and more people have been asking us about it.
As one of the first animation studios to adopt Bitcoin, we thought it beneficial to put together a quick guide on Bitcoin, from its origin story, the Lightning Network, and of course how to use Bitcoin which you can find right here.
Are we, at Echo Bridge, a little obsessed with Bitcoin?
Yes.
Yes we are.
It’s still early days, but in the long run we believe it’s one of the best financial tools in the market today which can help the global animation industry for the better.
Paid In Bitcoin
Happy to announce we paid out in Bitcoin!
Over the summer, we made an announcement that we would be accepting Bitcoin as a payment method for our production services. The news was met with a lot of curiosity from our clients, partners and vendors. We made the decision to publicly announce Bitcoin acceptance after a couple of projects had opted to pay with it earlier on. We were very excited.
Then, in November, we made the announcement that we’d start issuing payment in Bitcoin to our employees, contractors and vendors who wanted to accept it as their payment.
Today, we’re happy to share the news of our first payments made to those individuals using Bitcoin.
Our experience
The process is very straightforward. Exchanged dollars for bitcoin, then store it in a wallet. In our case, it’s using an institutional custodian for our holdings via multi-signatures, then the payments were sent out to the payee’s bitcoin wallet directly. Some opted for on-chain (meaning the original 10+ minutes of bitcoin processing) and others opted for Lightning payments (Lightning Network is a second layer solution to make payments faster with incredibly small fees).
The overall process was faster and more secure than a bank-to-bank transfer or a PayPal payment.
To manage the volatility
We made it a plan to make regular weekly exchanges (known as dollar cost averaging) in order to take advantages of dips in market price. Some weeks we bought more bitcoin, other weeks less, and while the dollar price may fluctuate, because you’re making regular exchanges, you’re managing the risk more effectively than exchanging everything all at once.
Future plans
We’re going to continue with this program throughout December and into the first quarter of 2022. We will also continue to maintain and grow our Bitcoin holdings on the balance sheet indefinitely.
Our short film, ATOM, will have its production budget priced in Bitcoin.
Starting in January, we’ll have prices for our services available in Bitcoin as well.
These are very exciting times for us as we continue to venture into the crypto space. We’re also happy to continue to be one of the first independent animation studios to continue to explore and innovate in the crypto space with the goal of helping to transform the way our industry conducts business all across the board.
Now Accepting Bitcoin
Yep, you read that right! We're really excited to announce that we're currently accepting Bitcoin as a medium of exchange for animation production services.
Simply put: If you want to pay with crypto, you can.
Paying with crypto is faster, cheaper and more secure than a wire transfer. The peer-to-peer processing is a great way to settle payments without much fuss.
How it works:
If you have Bitcoin already and want to use it for payments, you can.
You’ll receive an invoice from and it’s as simple as scanning the QR code or copy/pasting the payment address into your wallet. Quick, easy, painless.
Will we accept other cryptocurrencies in the future?
At the moment, we're mostly focused on Bitcoin.
It's really exciting times for us here and we're looking forward to seeing how it all plays out.