It wasn’t long after the announcement that Coinbase raised $75 million in funding that Gyft announced they’ve modified their platform to work with the Coinbase wallet. Now that they allow for the purchase of bitcoins through different bitcoin methods, Gyft joins the ranks of the few companies that allow for this kind of diversification.
“Gyft is all about choice and flexibility,” said Vinny Lingham, co-founder and CEO of Gyft. “That’s why we offer gift cards from hundreds of retailers and why we accept a wide variety of payments methods.”
According to Lingham, the company is excited about this new venture into Coinbase integration.
“At Gyft, we are also continually focused on creating the best experience around gift cards. That’s why we are excited about the Coinbase integration. Users now have another convenient way to pay with bitcoin. The checkout flow is easy and seamless.”
Through Gyft, customers can spend their bitcoins on gift cards at many major retailers. Whether it be iTunes for music, Starbucks for coffee, Target for groceries or Amazon for miscellaneous products, the gap is closing on being able to spend bitcoins on anything.
The platform also allows customers to store their gift cards on their phone, rather than in their purse or wallet. When Bitcoin users buy gift cards through Gyft, they receive three percent points back onto their account that can be redeemed for rewards.
Gyft Is All Bitcoin; Refuses to Accept Paycoin
One of the rumors floating around the controversial Paycoin and Paybase debacle, stemming from GAW Miners CEO Josh Garza, was that of Gyft accepting Paycoin as payment. There’s been an immense about out public debate and argument over the merits of the altcoin, with a large vocal group being against the coin in general.
Also Read: Josh Garza of PayCoin Challenges Litecoin Association Director to Public Debate Following Request to Delist
When Mike Johnson, the editor of Coinfire, found out about the rumor that Gyft would accept Paycoin, he took to Twitter to announce he was no longer using the Gyft app in protest.
Lingham quickly responded, calling the rumor rubbish, implying that he had no idea there was a rumor floating around. He stated that Gyft is fully committed to bitcoin, and bitcoin only.
Johnson claimed he heard the rumor from a GAW Miners employee over the phone, but it seems as though it was a false tip. However, a developer at GAW Miners named Evan Lucas has a code on Github involving Gyft API. Whether or not Gyft authorized its use remains unseen, but Lingham seemed quite adamant that Paycoin will not be utilizing any part of his platform.
Vinny Lingham as an Investor
Lingham was recently one of the leading investors in the Trustatom early seed funding round. Trustatom is a company that targets the use of the blockchain outside of the traditional sense and plans to launch CredyCo, a bitcoin 2.0 cryptographic due diligence service. Lingham also acts as an advisor to the platform.
In an interview with CoinDesk , Lingham was quoted saying the price of bitcoin won’t move upward until other solutions are found.
“The reality is that the price is not going to move until you find actual functional utility for bitcoins,” Lingham said. “Transferring value of bitcoins is not very interesting, in a sense, because the value fluctuates over time.”
