On Wednesday, the US-based digital currency exchange and wallet provider, Abra Wallet, announced via blog post that it has upgraded its global investment app. As a result of the upgrade, the app will now allow users to invest in commodities, stocks, and ETF (Exchange-Traded Funds) with Bitcoin.
The San Francisco-based firm has urged all its users from 155 countries worldwide to sign up with them to invest in 50 new investment assets using Bitcoin. The investment can be as little as $5 and it is with zero trading cost for the whole year of 2019.
Big News: #Stock and #ETF #investing coming to Abra 🚀 Sign up now for early access to secure $0 fees for 2019.
Available in 155 countries
Fractional investing w/$5 minimums
Private and secureWelcome to the #futureofinvesting, built on #Bitcoin! https://t.co/rvixGS74el
— Abra (@AbraGlobal) February 6, 2019
The platform is ready to provide a package deal on which opportunists can invest in stocks such as Facebook, Apple, Google, Netflix, Amazon, and Coca-Cola, fiat, exchange-traded funds, and cryptocurrencies.
Bill Barhydt, the Founder and the CEO of Abra commented on the development as following:
“We’re are going to start with popular US stocks and ETF’s and add more global assets in the coming months. Of course, all of the great features for investing in the cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies remain fully integrated as well.”
Mr. Barhydt further went on by saying that Abra contributes to the trades and investments using the crypto collateralized contracts (C3s). He explains how these contracts work, in Abra’s CEO words:
“[I]f you want to invest $1,000 in Apple shares you will place $1,000 worth of Bitcoin into a contract. As the price of Apple goes up or down versus the dollar, Bitcoin will be added to or subtracted from your contract. When you settle the contract – or sell the Apple investment – the value of the Apple shares will be reflected in Bitcoin in your wallet which can easily be converted back to dollars, or any other asset for that matter. When you enter into a C3, you’re effectively creating a smart contract which automatically determines – based on the price of the Apple shares – whether you have made money or lost money. The underlying Bitcoin collateral then adjusts itself accordingly to be equal to the value of the Apple shares.”
To put simply, investors will be setting up Bitcoin as collateral to invest in stock or an ETF. Bitcoin will be added into or subtracted out of their account as the status of the value of the assets shapes over time.
Abra will be the one taking risks in all of the contracts on the platform, but the risks have been carefully fenced and the system has gone through many trials for testing purposes on many contracts.
The CEO of the digital exchange ensures about it saying,
“Abra has already successfully processed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of these investments contracts and has never lost money on them”.
The development has brought a lot of excitement in the crypto community even though the platform will likely be less useful for US-based investors because of the easy access to the US stock market, but it will surely be a game changer in the regions of the large unbanked population where access to the said stock market is comparatively difficult.
According to Barhydt, the platform was designed to assist the investors from those regions, who were unable to invest in the global stock market previously, with these investment opportunities.
Caitlin Long, Co-Founder of the Wyoming Blockchain Coalition and a wall street veteran also expressed her appreciating views about this huge and game-changing development by Abra. Her tweet reads:
This is HUGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! All #bitcoin-based!!!!!! Kudos to @billbarhydt & team for lassoing traditional financial assets into Bitcoin, instead of trying to pigeonhole Bitcoin into the status quo—as so many other #crypto companies are doing. Best wishes for tremendous success! https://t.co/ZXs0lhqs8Z
— Caitlin Long 🔑 (@CaitlinLong_) February 6, 2019
Image courtesy of Pixabay.