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Hong₿ao began with a personal story: a father wanting to gift Bitcoin to his son, as meaningfully as a traditional red envelope. Today, we're a team of 2, making Bitcoin gifting simple, beautiful, and self-custodial.
About
Hong₿ao is a product of HackerHouse SASU, a company registered in France (for now).
We're also KYB @MtPelerin to top-up your Bill with your FIAT for Bitcoin.
Our main business is 🇫🇷 coliving spaces (that why the name). But after a burn out, Stephane realized that he is a solopreneur (thanks Marc Louvion) and that he can't be everywhere at the same time.
Today, we are just two. Stephane is the dev guy and Salma is the multi-tasking girl. We've been working together for a long time. We are complimentary (even if Salma knows how to code).
And thanks to Bitcoin, we can work on something that we love.
Why Hong₿ao?
Back in 2021, Eren was born. Stephane's son received traditional red envelopes (with cash inside) from his Grandma.
Hóng bāo (紅包) means "red envelope" in Chinese. It's a traditional gift given during Chinese New Year, Newborn, Wedding, Graduation, etc.
Then Nicolas, a crypto friend, gave a white envelope with a QR code to Stephane. It was an ETH address filled with shitcoins cryptos.
Stephane was wondering if he could do the same for Eren. But he didn't want to give him cash, neither shitcoins. He wanted to give him something that would be useful for his future.
He was already familiar with Bitcoin so he decided to create a Bitcoin Paper Wallet for his son. He would give it to Eren for each birthday and Christmas so he who would keep it in his drawer until he has the age to understand and transfer them to an hardware wallet.
And that's how Hong₿ao was born with the Bitcoin philosophy:
- Self custodial
- Good design for kids (and non-techies)
- No KYC
- Open Source
Why Paper in 2025 ?
We believe that paper is the simplest form of storage for Bitcoin. It's also the most secure way to store Bitcoin, even if you have a hardware wallet you still need to backup your 24 words seed phrase.
And it's the only way to give Bitcoin without knowing the recipient address.
Finally, it's always a good idea to bring a physical gift for a birthday or Christmas, rather than arriving empty-handed.
Why AI ?
We built it for our friends and family. We started designing custom paper wallets with the faces. We were not sure if it would be useful for other people.
Then ChatGPT Image Generation was released. We started to use it to generate the paper wallets.
So we built a V2 with AI :
- 1. Select a style : real, manga, marvel etc
- 2. Upload a photo of the recipient
- 3. Print your paper wallet
It went out of control
With AI we realized that we have no limits to our imagination.
The Manga
The Songs
In the end, we hope you will enjoy HongBao as much as we do while building it.
₿est,