In recent months, large payment companies such as Robinhood and PayPal have begun allowing people to purchase bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies through their sites. While people have likely had fun doing so, they have encountered an issue in that some of these firms do not allow users to move their digital money to other platforms. Revolut, a London-based banking app, initially took this approach as well, but is now looking to change form.
Revolut Is Changing How It Does Business
A leaked blog post suggests that Revolut is now looking to change its systems somewhat in the coming future to make it easier for users to move their money around. If you own bitcoin and it is stored on Revolut, the time is coming in which you can move your money off the app and hold positions elsewhere. The change is coming as early as next week for the company’s top-tier clients, while all persons involved in the app will have access to this feature not long after the beta phase.
A spokesperson for the company explained in an interview:
We are launching next Thursday. Unfortunately, the blog went up a little too soon. We are starting with bitcoin, but we will be adding more tokens and upgrades in the [near] future.
Not long after the blog went up, the message was taken down. Users will now see a “404 error” page in its stead. The spokesperson says that the blog should not have gone up when it did, and this was likely due to a “scheduling” problem that the staff of Revolut had not foreseen.
However, customers of Revolut can still purchase a variety of different cryptocurrencies including bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum and Ripple’s XRP. Employees of Revolut were also informed of the coming changes through an announcement which stated:
Huge Revolut milestone to announce. Our public beta for crypto withdrawals has now soft launched for all eligible users.
The facts that so many of these companies do not allow people to withdraw their assets and move them around as they please are troubling to many figures, some of whom hold rather prominent positions. Russell Okung, for example, is a former NFL player for the Carolina Panthers. In 2020, he made headlines when he announced that he would be converting half of his $13 million annual salary to bitcoin.
No Keys for Users?
In an interview, Okung took issue with both Robinhood and PayPal and said that anyone storing their assets with the company did not actually own their assets. He explained:
Buying bitcoin on Robinhood is not owning bitcoin. Buying bitcoin through PayPal is not owning bitcoin.
The main issue that stems from these platforms is that users are not given direct keys to their assets, meaning that while the coins may be in their names, they do not have the same access that is available through a digital currency exchange.
