Uphold gets $57.5m for loss assurance
The financial services platform has facilitated more than $1 billion in transactions across 181 countries.
Cloud-based financial services platform Uphold has entered into a partnership with Greg Kidd, an investor in Ripple, Square, Coinbase and other crypto companies, to expand its loss assurance ratio for fund members.
Uphold enables its users to convert, hold and transact in any form of money or commodity, including digital currencies, instantly. The service has facilitated more than $1 billion in transactions across 181 countries.
This new $57.5 million partnership will help to increase the platform’s loss assurances to around 20% of its total current crypto holdings. Additionally, Kidd’s investment vehicle, Hard Yaka, will fund the creation of Uphold Labs, a research and development unit providing consumer and partner solutions businesses.
“This collaboration will also enable us to accelerate our product development activities, focusing on adding new assets, more connectivity to financial systems, as well as blockchain and Ripple-centric projects,” Uphold chief executive Adrian Steckel said.
Uphold has also revealed that Greg Kidd will join the company’s Board of Directors.
Increasing protections for cryptoassets
As cryptocurrencies continue to expand in popularity and volume, a number of companies have proposed different ways to protect these, and other, digital assets. For example, VersaBank, a branchless digital bank in Canada, is developing a blockchain-based vault that will allow customers to securely store digital property.
The vault will act like a regular safety deposit box, except for the fact that it will only house digital contents. These include land title deeds, legal documents, wills and testaments, sensitive images and other digital assets, for example, bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Stellar Lumens, Bitcoin Cash, Monero, NEO and Litecoin.
Protection can also come in the form of governance. Two major US financial regulators plan to dedicate significant resources to monitoring the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) marketplace that spawns cryptocurrencies. The US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity and Futures Trading Commission will “pursue those who seek to evade the registration, disclosure and antifraud requirements” of securities laws.
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