Out of the blue yesterday I received an email from FOLD that said "Important Notice Bitcoin Buying and Custody Update". Since I live in the US and that is Fold's main operating ground I figured immediately that it was going to be bad news the only question I really had was how bad was it looking it be. When I opened the email then and read it I had to do a double take and read through it once more because well it wasn't bad news at all and honestly was fantastic news to hear!
So what good news did they announce?!
Purchasing Bitcoin Directly
Last Fall Fold released the ability to buy BTC straight through the app and I have to give them the credit they made it an extremely easy process which is something that is really important for onboarding new people into the cryptosphere. They continued to work on the experience and ended up getting to the point that when you bought the BTC that BTC you could practically immediately withdraw to another wallet (a couple of minutes was typically needed to verify transactions). With the email, they released a three-step plan to further improve:
- Diversify across liquidity partners to offer the lowest cost spreads.
- Create redundancy across qualified custodians to protect against single points of failure.
- Create a unique Bitcoin buying experience with rewards, fun, and unique ways to stack.
Fold has already begun working in the first two steps in the list by moving to a multi-layered custodial structure with two qualified custodians, Fortress Trust and Bitgo, and adding additional liquidity providers. Fortress Trust and BITGO together offer Fold users fully reserved qualified custodians that are ensured with a whopping $250 million in insurance on assets. Users do not have to do anything as Fold is taking care of moving the assets to the two custodians but Fold does remind users that their (Fold's) purpose is NOT to hold a user's Bitcoin and that they encourage users to be self-custodians!
This will cause a few changes in the short term that Fold states in the email including:
- During the migration process purchased Bitcoin withdrawals will not be available for a few hours during the weekend of June 16-18.
- Reward withdrawals are temporarily switching back to once-a-week batch withdrawals (every Tuesday)
- Buying of Bitcoin is temporarily paused and will be coming back up in July
None of these changes I think affect the app all that much and while they might cause some inconvenience the benefit of the change I think is definitely worth it. Not to mention these changes establish a path for returning to service in all 50 states! Currently, several states either do not allow Fold or limit the Bitcoin buying feature. The change will allow residents in states like CT, HI, NC, SD, TX, NY, ID, and ME to be able to fully access the platform once more!
New Features
I had to save it for last but this update notification also came with some new features that we will be seeing soon! All of these have previously been talked about on Fold's Discord and even their Twitter account to see what the users were wanting/were interested in and are finally here!
- Round-Ups: a convenient way to invest your spare change into bitcoin
- Flexible Dollar-Cost Average buying options for greater investment control
- Lightning network withdrawals
- $250,000,000 insurance on assets
Out of the 4 that they announced it is the top three that interest me the most and I cannot wait to utilize them all! The fourth one was really part of the move to Fortress Trust and Bitgo and does provide some additional comfort. I was never really scared about losing my BTC/money with Fold since I often pull my BTC rewards off of the platform like they recommend you do and send it to a cold storage wallet. Since Fold already pays for the withdrawal it will be interesting to see if adding the Lightning Network lowers the amount of sats you have to have for a withdrawal from 50k to some lower number! That would be a huge move, especially for the next bull run when your sats back naturally goes down since BTC moves higher. Overall this was nothing short of fantastic news for current Fold users, future Fold users, and Bitcoin adoptions overall.
As a reminder Fold is still offering their boosted referral rewards promotion, get 50k sats and give 50k sats, when people sign up through my referral link , sign up for the FREE Fold Card and spend $20 with their Fold Card!
Please know I am not a financial advisor and make sure you do your own research! If you enjoyed this article and would like to support me further below are a few referral links that if you used when signing up I would appreciate it! Also, follow me on Twitter @Cje95_
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