Revolut expands its cryptocurrency listing

Revolut, the UK-based digital bank, has been offering cryptocurency trading services since 2017. Naturally, it started with Bitcoin (BTC) because it is the best known, and it added Ethereum (ETH) and Litecoin (LTC) just a few months later. This weekend it announced it is adding another 11 cryptocurrencies to its existing list for UK and EU customers to trade.

In the bank’s blog published on 8th April, it started by saying that 2021 would be ‘Revolut’s year of crypto’, or as it says, “A whole year to bring you new features, new tokens, and a few other surprises along the way.”

The move is in response to customer requests, and Revolut has responded by adding Cardano, Uniswap, Synthetix, Yearn Finance, Uma, Bancor, Filecoin, Numeraire, Loopring, Orchid, and The Graph to its crypto trading platform.

Some of the new assets will be more familiar to crypto enthusiasts than others. For example, Cardano (ADA) is the token that powers the Cardano blockchain. It relies on a proof-of-stake consensus model called Ouroboros. Cardano validates blockchain transactions without the high energy costs associated with other similar blockchains.

Uniswap (UNI) is another well-publicised token on the Ethereum blockchain. Uniswap is an exchange that allows users to easily trade different Ethereum assets in a decentralised manner.

Filecoin is the native token of the Filecoin network. This is a “decentralised storage network, which aims to let anyone host, store, or receive digital information. It turns cloud storage into a market and allows users to sell their excess storage on an open platform.”

For those customers who may have an interest in stock market prices, Numerai (NMR) is a crowd-sourced, AI-run investment firm that allows the public to submit machine learning models to predict stock prices. These crowd-sourced models are ranked weekly in what Numerai calls “the hardest data science tournament on the planet”. Winners are rewarded with NMR, an Ethereum- based token.

Revolut emphasises that its “crypto funds are held in cold storage with some of the best custodians in the crypto game.” Adding, “External hard drives used for cold storage are disconnected from any networks when crypto transactions aren’t happening, so they’re very resistant to hacking.”

This move by Revolut indicates a growing interest from retail investors in cryptocurrencies, and a desire to buy and sell them without doing it through one of the big exchanges such as Coinbase and Binance. It bodes well for the future of cryptocurrency’s place in digital banking.