Bitcoin Global News (BGN)

March 13, 2019 -- ADVFN Crypto NewsWire -- Cryptocurrency exchanges vary immensely in the products, features and capabilities they offer. This is not always up to the company itself, but has to do with government regulations in place where the organization is based. Further, secondary banking, money or cryptocurrency handling licenses are needed in many countries to offer services such as fiat deposits. This has encouraged a great deal of collaboration between blockchain technology based start ups and existing financial institutions that already have specialized licenses in place.

Revolut - A Banking Unicorn

The company originated in Level39, a financial technology incubator in Canary Wharf, London, founded by Nikolay Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko. In April of last year, completed their final fundraising round totaling $250 million The funding was led by Hong Kong-based DST Global, and brought the company’s total valuation to $1.7 billion - a unicorn start up. Today, Revolut Ltd is still based in the UK, and offers banking services including a prepaid debit cards (MasterCard or VISA) for individuals or businesses, currency exchange, cryptocurrency exchange and peer-to-peer payments.

In December of last year, Revolut was granted the Specialised Bank licence and the Electronic Money Institution licence from European Central Bank. The process was facilitated by the Bank of Lithuania. This gave Revolut authorization to accept deposits and offer consumer credits. The primary difference between a specialised and a full-range bank is the ability to provide investment services. As a specialised bank, Revolut cannot provide instant services.

Cryptocurrency Trading

Their mobile app includes ATM withdrawals in 120 currencies and the ability to send 26 currencies directly from the app, as well as instant access to Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ripple (XRP). All cryptocurrencies can be exchanged to or from 25 fiat currencies. The only downfall is that cryptocurrencies within Revolut are not actually held by the customer, meaning they cannot transfer the tokens to another wallet or spend them as a normal currency.

However, because of their process for handling cryptocurrency, Revolut was recently able to establish a new method to ensure the value of a users cryptocurrency by setting exchange limits. Similar to them method on standard exchanges where a certain price cap can be set above or below the current price to automatically buy or sell a given amount of the currency. An auto-exchange can be made for all or part of a customer’s balance from any fiat or crypto currency supported by their app.

By: BGN Editorial Staff