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3 Debit Cards Nigerians Can Use to Spend Cryptocurrencies in Stores and Online

20/03/2020 by Idelto Editor

Options to acquire cryptocurrencies in Nigeria have been growing in number, along with increasing interest in bitcoin. Nigerians are also starting to see more opportunities to spend their coins in brick and mortar stores and at online merchants. Three crypto debit cards are now available to the residents of the African nation which is also the continent’s largest economy.

Also read: Nigerians Can Now Buy Bitcoin With Cash From Stores and ATMs That Take Naira

Crypto Exchange App First Kudi Issues Debit Card in Partnership With Stanbic IBTC Bank

Nigerian company First Kudi offers users a currency exchange and payments app. The mobile software facilitates purchases and sales of cryptocurrencies with Nigeria’s national fiat, the naira, and U.S. dollars. Users can link their bank account or credit card to the application which allows them to transact between Kudi wallets free of charge, deposit and withdraw funds from other crypto wallets and fiat accounts, and make payments at POS terminals.

Formerly known as Kudi Exchange, the fintech platform is owned by TLG Ventures in partnership with Ferrum Network and operates from Lagos. Besides the fiat options, which also include Ghanaian cedi and Kenyan shilling, its app supports bitcoin core (BTC), ethereum (ETH), the stablecoin Gemini dollar (GUSD), and the native Ferrum Network Token (FRM).

First Kudi now issues a debit Kudi Card in partnership with Nigeria’s Stanbic IBTC bank, member of Stanbic IBTC Holdings and Standard Bank Group, a South African financial services provider and Africa’s largest banking group. Holders can use the card to turn crypto into traditional money or buy goods and services with bitcoin and naira. Its balance can be topped up directly from the Kudi Wallet.

A Kudi account is needed to order and use the wallet and the Verve enabled card, and users need to pass KYC. The procedure involves providing full name, email address, and phone number, the Nigeria Bitcoin Community portal details. Certain fees apply to some transactions with First Kudi. Bitcoin withdrawals to another wallet are charged 0.0005 BTC per transfer. Withdrawing fiat to a bank account will cost you 100 NGN ($0.27) for naira and $10 for U.S. dollars. The POS transaction fee for bitcoin, naira, and dollars is 0.50%.

Patricia and Crypterium Provide Nigerians With More Crypto Card Options

Demand for this type of service in Nigeria, where around half of the population remains unbanked, is creating conditions inviting other offerings in the market. Patricia, a Nigerian e-commerce platform that started with gift cards trading, has set out to make it easy for customers to buy and sell bitcoin, as its website notes. The company behind it, Patricia Technologies, recently announced the launch of a new crypto debit card.

The Patricia Bitcoin ATM Card will allow users to withdraw cash directly from their BTC and Nigerian naira wallets, make POS payments and online transactions, transfer funds through teller machines like with any other debit card issued by a traditional bank, PM News Nigeria reported in late February. Registration is required to obtain the card.

Affirming the startup’s commitment to financial inclusion, Patricia founder Fejiro Hanu Agbodje acknowledged that payments won’t change overnight and predicted a long transitional period before the world starts to transact in digital currencies. That’s why his team focuses on combining digital infrastructure with existing card processing and banking infrastructure as a step towards mass adoption of cryptocurrencies. The Nigerian entrepreneur pointed out that Patricia card users will have access to cash and be able to pay bills, make over-the-counter transactions, and buy subscriptions. Agbodje further stated:

We will allow you to spend your bitcoin anytime, everywhere and anywhere.

Nigerians have another option to use cryptocurrencies through a debit card. Crypterium, an Estonia-based crypto payment and wallet provider, issues the Global Bitcoin Card, which allows holders to spend cryptocurrencies at merchants and withdraw fiat cash from ATMs in almost 180 countries around the world, as news.Bitcoin.com recently reported. The card, which is powered by the payment processor Unionpay, currently supports several major cryptocurrencies: BTC, ETH, LTC, as well as Crypterium’s own CRPT token.

To get the card you need to download the Crypterium wallet first and install it on your phone. To receive a download link, you have to provide your phone number. The app comes with a virtual card and the plastic one can be ordered separately. The platform delivers worldwide, including many countries not supported by other crypto card issuers. Nigeria is on the list along with other nations with potential to become important crypto markets such as India and Brazil. In November, Coinsutra reported that users of its portal from these countries have been able to obtain the debit card.

Do you know of other cryptocurrency debit cards available in Nigeria? Let us know in the comments section below.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation, endorsement, or sponsorship of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Flipstarter Reveals Eatbch and BCH Development Funding Goals – Blog Post Receives $2k in Tips

25/02/2020 by Idelto Editor

On Sunday, developers of the Flipstarter.cash project announced the start of private testing for the platform’s BCH assurance contracts and the team also revealed the first two funding projects. One of the first funding goals will be raising bitcoin cash for the nonprofit food charity Eatbch in Venezuela and South Sudan. Additionally, Flipstarter hopes to raise $500,000 toward BCH infrastructure development and suggested a list of six full node teams that could leverage the application.

Also Read: Voluntary Financing: Bitcoin Cash Devs Reveal Noncustodial Funding App Flipstarter

Flipstarter’s First Two Campaigns: Eatbch and Six BCH Full Node Teams

On February 18, news.Bitcoin.com reported on a voluntary financing application for Bitcoin Cash called Flipstarter. The platform aims to be a noncustodial funding application similar to Mike Hearn’s Lighthouse project. When Flipstarter developers revealed the creation they detailed that the system would leverage BCH assurance contracts via an Anyone-can-pay Sighash. The project announcement was welcomed by the community and some people believe Flipstarter could be the answer to the ongoing Infrastructure Funding Plan (IFP) debate.

#Flipstarter The path to public campaigns, a step closer every day!https://t.co/ej5iBrxYpg

— flipstartercash (@flipstartercash) February 24, 2020

Following the original announcement, Flipstarter published another read.cash blog post giving the public more details about the project’s initial goals. The first two goals will attempt to fund BCH infrastructure and the BCH community’s most popular charity Eatbch. Fund one’s campaign for Eatbch will start as a public beta as the developers have announced:

We have a lot of respect for the EatBCH volunteers in Venezuela and South Sudan. We would like to help them by funding one month of activities in both countries with the first Flipstarter campaign.

The other funding plan is to fuel the BCH ecosystem with an overall $500,000 target. “Target for funding is $500k in total by May 2 — It will be both meaningful and hard given the rough state of the user experience,” the Flipstarter devs explained. “Flipstarter will either be helping teams to run their own campaigns or supporting an existing social media platform to run a platform for campaigns. That will be the topic of another article. For now, we will be conservative and commit to supporting a narrow list of six full node teams to run campaigns. This is obviously an invitation with no requirement. The teams are free to participate or not and to set up whatever amount that they want,” the Flipstarter team added. Currently, the list of full node projects mentioned includes:

BCHD
Bitcoin ABC
Bitcoin Cash Node
Bitcoin Unlimited
Bitcoin Verde
Flowee

Flipstarter’s Read.cash Post Receives $2k in BCH Tips

Flipstarter’s creators say that the campaigns for the current list and ones going forward will need a decent proposal. The read.cash post got some positive comments from the community and one of the developers of the BCH Node, Freetrader, commented on the Flipstarter funding concept. “I’m sure the Bitcoin Cash Node project would like to use this — Let’s see how far we get,” Freetrader remarked.

Flipstarter’s programmers include a slew of BCH volunteers such as Imaginary Username, Emergent Reasons, Sploit, Leandro DiMarco, Jonathan Silverblood, and Dagur. Flipstarter developers are inviting people to join the project’s official Telegram channel if they are interested in learning about this new project. The team has also come up with a list of funding ideas like a full-time maintainer who needs funds, money for operational expenses like websites and servers, and financing ongoing maintenance.

The announcement about BCH infrastructure funding and financing for Eatbch also got $2,000 worth of BCH tips. The Flipstarter app will be a plugin for Electron Cash and the team’s developers have written a descriptive walkthrough on how it will work. “Target for completion is March 7,” the Flipstarter software developers revealed.

What do you think about the Flipstarter project for Bitcoin Cash? Do you think that a concept like this could bolster voluntary financing for the Bitcoin Cash commons? Let us know your opinion in the comments section below.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation, endorsement, or sponsorship of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

Image credits: Shutterstock, Flipstarter.cash, read.cash, Fair Use, Eatbch.org, and Pixabay.

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Voluntary Financing: Bitcoin Cash Devs Reveal Noncustodial Funding App Flipstarter

18/02/2020 by Idelto Editor

On February 15, a user on the read.cash blog site announced the development of a new Bitcoin Cash fundraising project called Flipstarter.cash. The developers behind the platform highlighted the recent questions people have been asking about voluntary funding of the Bitcoin Cash commons. The Flipstarter team plans to release an application that allows people to fund projects in a “secure, non-custodial” fashion using the Electron Cash wallet.

Also Read: The Many Facts Pointing to Dorian Nakamoto Being Satoshi

Flipstarter: A Lighthouse-Like Bitcoin Cash Crowdfunding App Is Coming Soon

A team of software developers have revealed they are working on a BCH project called Flipstarter.cash which will allow people to fund projects in a noncustodial manner. The project announcement said that “a group of volunteers came together to create Flipstarter” referring to the recent discussions over the Infrastructure Funding Plan (IFP). The blog post mentions the “big questions in the air right now in the Bitcoin Cash space” and explains that the project was created to help bolster a voluntary funding mechanism for the BCH ecosystem.

Introducing https://t.co/6jIezfv9U5 https://t.co/BBg2s39OQ2

— flipstartercash (@flipstartercash) February 15, 2020

Over the next few weeks, the group of BCH developers plan to test and release the software. The project is similar to Mike Hearn’s Lighthouse project that was shelved when he left the Bitcoin community. The developers disclosed that “Flipstarter is basically Lighthouse but boiled down to the main feature. That is an old feature of Bitcoin transactions called ‘Anyone-can-pay.’”

In traditional bitcoin cash transactions, when you sign you authorize all the outputs and inputs. But with an Anyone-can-pay Sighash, a crowdfunding transaction (signing a partial transaction) can be built by approving all outputs and only your inputs. Anyone-can-pay transactions can make it so pledged donations need to reach a threshold (funding goal) before they are spent. “In other words, as long as everyone agrees on the total output, anyone can help pay, and everything happens trustlessly,” Flipstarter’s creators detailed. “We need to create a way for people to participate in assurance contracts,” the programmers added. However, the Anyone-can-pay structure doesn’t have much wallet support so for the first version the programmers chose to create a plugin for Electron Cash (EC).

User-Friendliness Is Great But a Trustless Noncustodial Solution Is Needed

Essentially, a user would install the EC plugin and select a proposal from the Flipstarter website. Then they can set a pledge value and copy and paste some text which adds the necessary information into the EC plugin. The EC plugin will then build a signed, partial transaction that is frozen and you can “unfreeze it at any time.” The Flipstarter website monitors the pledges until the soft cap or funding goal is complete. “The site finalizes the assurance contract, and pays out to the target addresses,” the Flipstarter developers said. “If the campaign does not get enough pledges, then everyone can un-freeze their pledge and use it as normal. That is, the coin never leaves Electron Cash until the whole campaign succeeds.” Flipstarter’s creators added:

It looks a bit clunky, but the process is more secure, non-custodial, does not require the user to take their coins out of Electron Cash and it lets us get something working with limited time and resources.

The developers have contemplated other options, but for now they are sticking with the EC plugin because it is a trustless, non-custodial solution. Of course, the Flipstarter creators are just getting started and the user interface and concept can be improved a great deal. “Volunteers will continue to develop it, and there is opportunity for a for-profit team to develop it into a full-fledged platform — Whatever happens, we are making the first version so that anyone can fork it and run a campaign by themselves,” Flipstarter’s developers insisted. Currently, the volunteers working on Flipstarter include developers such as Dagur, Jonathan#100, Leandro_DiMarco, Imaginary Username, Emergent Reasons, and Sploit.

What do you think about the Flipstarter plugin for Electron Cash? Do you think that a concept like this could bolster voluntary financing for the Bitcoin Cash commons? Let us know your opinion in the comments section below.

Image credits: Shutterstock, Flipstarter.cash, read.cash, Fair Use, and Pixabay.

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Boerse Stuttgart’s Bison Trading App to Add Bitcoin Cash and Launch Desktop Version

02/02/2020 by Idelto Editor

With 80,000 Users, Boerse Stuttgart’s Trading App Bison to Add Bitcoin Cash and Launch Desktop Version

Bison, the crypto trading application offered by Boerse Stuttgart, has seen a remarkable growth of users in the past 12 months, the group announced this week. Germany’s second-largest stock exchange is now planning to expand its features and offer traders in Europe another cryptocurrency option, bitcoin cash (BCH).

Also read: Eastern Europe Sees More Fiat Options for Trading Crypto

Over 80,000 Users Added Since Launch

A year after it was launched, Bison now has around 81,000 active users, the stock exchange revealed in a press release published Thursday. According to Boerse Stuttgart Group, the mobile app’s success so far is largely due to the “uncomplicated and secure” crypto trading it facilitates on your smartphone.

The software is developed by Sowa Labs, a subsidiary of Boerse Stuttgart Digital Ventures GmbH. It was released last year and it’s currently available for Android and iOS devices. The app is designed as a means for investors to gain exposure to the cryptocurrency markets. Sowa Labs CEO Ulli Spankowski commented:

We are very satisfied with the level of take-up for Bison. Our approach has been to make trading in cryptocurrencies as simple as possible, and the response has been excellent. Over the past 12 months, we have received a great deal of valuable feedback from users that we incorporate into the further development of Bison.

The developers emphasize they are gradually adding new features to the Bison app since its launch and plan to continue to improve the user experience. The next step will be to finalize the development and the implementation of a desktop version of the application.

Another premiere the team is planning is the introduction of bitcoin cash (BCH) to the trading platform. Bison currently supports bitcoin core (BTC), ethereum (ETH), litecoin (LTC), and ripple (XRP). Traders can transfer BTC from their private wallets to Bison since the start of the year, and in the future they’ll be able to do so with the other tradable coins.

Bison users trade the cryptocurrencies with Euwax AG, which is also a subsidiary of Boerse Stuttgart. Euwax is a financial services provider operating under German regulations. Since October 2019, Bison has supported 24-hour trading. It makes its profit from the spread between the buying and selling price and no other fees are charged.

Bison Now Available in European Economic Area

So far, Germany has had a rather positive regulatory attitude towards businesses operating with digital assets. In November, new legislation allowed German banks to store and trade cryptocurrencies starting from 2020, which led to financial companies such as Solarisbank developing and offering new services including custodial and trading solutions for digital assets.

Boerse Stuttgart is one of those traditional institutions that have turned their attention to the crypto space quite early in comparison with other major players. In December, the stock exchange opened its digital asset trading platform, Boerse Stuttgart Digital Exchange, to all interested persons in Germany, as news.Bitcoin.com reported. BSDEX is the country’s first regulated trading venue for digital assets.

The Bison app is now available beyond the borders of the Federal Republic. As of recently, interested citizens of the European Economic Area and Switzerland have been able to use it to trade major cryptocurrencies. Last year, the application was upgraded with individual price alerts. Furthermore, it now provides users with a report showing the amounts they are supposed to declare for taxation purposes.

Have you used mobile crypto trading apps such as Bison? Which one would you recommend? Share your experience in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Uphold App Now Lets Users Easily Trade Directly Between Over 60 Cryptos, Fiat Currencies and Metals

29/01/2020 by Idelto Editor

Uphold App Now Lets Users Trade Directly Between Over 60 Cryptos, Fiat Currencies and Metals

The new Uphold mobile app features an ‘Anything to Anything’ interface, which lets users easily trade directly between more than 60 assets. This means that Uphold users in the UK for example, can now directly buy bitcoin cash (BCH) with their local GBP fiat without having to use an intermediary currency such as USD or BTC. The company also added bank connectivity for users in seven more countries, bringing the total to nearly 40 countries.

Also Read: Uphold Users Gain Access to Salt’s Crypto-Backed Loans

Anything to Anything Trading

Digital money platform Uphold has announced the introduction of a new interface and pricing model with its new iOS and Android mobile apps. The new ‘Anything to Anything’ interface enables users to fund their accounts, make transfers, and trade directly between more than 60 cryptocurrencies, fiat currencies, and metals, using just one screen.

The new app also features a ‘commission-free’ pricing model, which means that instead of paying trading fees Uphold users just get an all-inclusive, guaranteed price that includes a spread. The company claims this spread typically ranges between 50 to 100bps (0.5 to 1.0%) on cryptocurrencies, but can sometimes go as low as 40bps (0.4%) depending on individual trading behavior and volumes. This new pricing model is said to be driven by a new trading engine hooked up to triple the number of exchanges it was before, enabling Uphold to secure digital assets at better prices.

“Last year, we surveyed our lapsed customers who told us that while they loved Uphold’s Anything-to-Anything transaction capability, the platform was hard to use and felt expensive,” the team explained. ”We’ve acted on the feedback and are now introducing major changes that make Uphold one of the easiest and most cost-effective places to trade cryptocurrencies and other assets.”

As part of the new app launch, the company also added bank connectivity for users in seven more countries: UK, Canada, Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Hungary, and Croatia. This brings the total number of markets where bank connectivity to Uphold users is available to nearly 40 countries. Users can fund their Uphold accounts with credit or debit cards, bank transfers and a number of cryptos including BCH, BTC, LTC, ETH, BAT, DASH, XRP as well as a few stablecoins. All deposits are now free but some types of withdrawals still cost a fee.

Global Digital Money Platform

Uphold is a digital money platform offering investments and payment services based on blockchain technology. With more than 1.7 million users globally, Uphold has powered $5.7 billion in transactions as of January 2020. The San Francisco based firm provides both retail customers and businesses worldwide with access to fiat and digital currencies, as well as precious metals. The company has offices in New York, Portugal, and London.

Uphold is also a major member of the Universal Protocol Alliance, a group of like-minded cryptocurrency companies and blockchain organizations that want to connect different digital assets in a single network. In December 2019, Bitcoin.com Exchange listed the Alliance’s Universal Protocol Token (UPT), a mega-utility token offering attractive interest rates when lending and borrowing, lower exchange fees, cashback and discounts on trading.

Uphold also recently announced a partnership with Salt Lending to provide its users with cash or stablecoin loans using cryptocurrencies as collateral. With this development, its users can secure loans through Salt against their holdings in BCH, BTC, ETH, DASH, and XRP.

What do you think about Uphold letting its users trade between over 60 assets directly without using the USD as an intermediary? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

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