BitPay Gives Vote of Approval To Altcoins, ShapeShift
Leading Bitcoin payment processor, BitPay , recently endorsed an innovative Bitcoin company, ShapeShift. In a blog post, the company described how one could use ShapeShift to pay for things in crypto-currencies other than Bitcoin through BitPay.
ShapeShift CEO Erik Vorhees calls the website, “the Google Translate of crypto-currencies” referring to how easy it is to transfer from one crypto-currency to another.
BitPay mentions crypto-currencies and blockchain tokens like DASH, Ether and Namecoin in a subtle endorsement of sorts.
BitPay lent its vote of approval to the exchange in a blog post wherein the company demonstrated how to pay a Bitcoin invoice by exchanging digital currencies for Bitcoin at ShapeShift.io.
BitPay, based in Atlanta, Georgia, was founded in 2013 with the mission of making Bitcoin as easy as possible. Creating a way for customers and merchants to transact with one another in the digital currency Bitcoin, BitPay does approximately $1 million per year in business.
BitPay uses the crypto-currency Dogecoin as an example. “The full process takes a couple of minutes,” BitPay said.
BitPay evokes the fact that you don’t need an account at ShapeShift to enjoy its benefits.
ShapeShift is not the only Bitcoin facing company the merchant processing startups lends evokes in its blog post. The other, BitGive, is a non-profit to leverage Bitcoin to improve public health and the environment.
Last month, BitPay joined Coinbase in offering a debit card linked to a BitPay account. Linking Bitcoin to the traditional financial system intimately, such debit cards are easy to receive and easy to use. The company stated of the card:
The BitPay Card can be loaded with dollars in seconds from any bitcoin wallet. There are zero fees on bitcoin top-ups, and you can load up to $10,000 per day in spendable funds. Want to supplement your bitcoin top-ups? The BitPay Card can also be reloaded with direct deposits from your employer.
BitPay CCO Sonny Singh discussed last month the main factors for Bitcoin’s recent price actions with Bloomberg West .
There’s been a lot of activity having China’s (Yuan) price run up about a month ago, and the Yuan was starting to be devalued, and capital controls were starting to go into effect. The people were using (Bitcoin) as a way to get some money into a currency that is not being depreciated.
Singh also commented on the nature of Bitcoin transactions: “Two years ago, when the price was over $1000 USD, the number of Bitcoin transactions per day were only 50,000 (now, the number has grown to 5X that amount, daily ) (and) 70% of our (BitPay) Bitcoin transactions were happening domestically in the United States, and today that has completely reversed! Now, 70% happen internationally and 30% domestically.”
Featured image from BitPay.
