Launch of Bull Bitcoin Version 2

We are excited to announce the launch of what we’ve been calling internally Bull Bitcoin V2, an major upgrade to the apps hosted at bullbitcoin.com and bylls.com.

We’ve packaged improvements to the user experience, as well as an overall front-end upgrade and, more importantly, a much more streamlined and lighter KYC process. Many of these measures are aimed at reducing to an operational and legally compliant minimum the amount of personal data stored and processed by Bull Bitcoin.

In addition, there are various performance enhancements, and this new framework will allow us to deploy tons of exciting new features over the next few months! We invite you to have a look at the redesigned dashboard and user interfaces, and send us feedback!

We will be moving on to new exciting improvements in the meanwhile, and releasing these upgrades continuously as always.

Redesigned user dashboard

We’ve upgraded the user dashboard to be much simpler, easier to navigate and with new options. The new “Financials” tab for instance shows all the transaction history, the current balances, all-time transaction volumes per payment method, the dollar-cost averaging progress and we now let you export all your order data as a single CSV.

You’ll notice that orders are now classified by general category (Funding, Buy Bitcoin, Sell Bitcoin) in addition to payment method:

1. Funding order: includes all payment methods to add Canadian dollar balances to your Bull Bitcoin account such as e-transfers, wire transfers or Desjardins bank transfers.
2. Buy Bitcoin order: includes all methods such as recurring buy, regular buy and Buy Bitcoin with L-BTC
3. Sell Bitcoin order: includes all methods that involve the user sending Bitcoin to Bull Bitcoin or Bylls, such as paying a standard biller, paying a personal payee or buying a gift card,.

The “Account” tab gives you a clear overview of the information provided, the information requested and your KYC status, as well as the available services and the associated transaction limits.

We’ll be working on better accounting features so that you don’t have to export your data elsewhere to get an overview of yours ins and outs.

Streamlined KYC levels and account status

The KYC process has been simplified internally, and for the user, using three KYC levels. It is no longer required to link a bank account.

1. Registered: you’ve signed up but not provided information. You can’t do anything else on the platform but continue the KYC process or have a look around to see how it works.
2. Limited: you’ve provided basic account information that proves you are a unique user, i.e. phone number, email and a Canadian address. You have not provided any other information proving your identity, and your identity verification process has not been completed. You can use our services to sell or spend Bitcoin up to a $1000 limit per transaction.
3. Verified: you’ve provided your date of birth and your occupation. You’ve clicked on the “verify my identity” button in your account profile page. We’ve validated automatically your information using credit databases. Or, perhaps, the validation has failed because the records are not up to date, or any other reason. Or, perhaps, you’ve opted out of this automated verification process and chosen to upload an ID document instead. In these cases, you will be in touch with the Bull Bitcoin support team to speed up the process and help you get to what you really want to do: buy or sell some Bitcoin!

In addition, we’ve added a dynamic “next steps” section to the accounts page in the user dashboard that will automatically suggest to the user what to do next when signing up and registering.

Instant identity verification

Our new instant identity verification system can be used as an alternative to uploading an identity document to verify your identity if you decide to upgrade your transaction limits.

This system uses credit records to validate your information, it does not impact credit scores and we do not get any information about you from the credit agencies other than whether or not the information you provided us matches their records. If there is a match, your account is automatically upgraded to Verified. In that case, you can sell Bitcoin without transaction limits without having to upload an ID.

If you do not wish to participate in instant identity verification, you can opt-out and choose to upload an ID document instead.

Account conversion notice

In the process of converting existing Bull Bitcoin accounts to this new streamlined format, it is possible that some users that were fully verified to perform orders suddenly find themselves not being able to do so. This may be caused because we are now requiring two new fields of information, date of birth and occupation, to comply with regulations coming into effect June 1st 2021. Once you have a verified account, you no longer have any transaction limits and you can fund your account, buy bitcoin or sell bitcoin.

More to come!

From a technical point of view, this upgrade allows us to develop more features simultaneously and we will be deploying further updates going forward on a regular basis. We hope you enjoy all these new features, and we look forward to your feedback!