Looking at the recent developments in bitcoin sector one can’t help but wonder whether bitcoin is losing its sheen. Well-known names in cryptocurrency industry are gradually shifting their focus from bitcoin to mainstream finance. Ironically banks, the backbones of mainstream finance are now looking towards adopting the technology behind these cryptocurrencies.
Bitreserve, the much celebrated bitcoin financial service has also opted for a more mainstream approach, leaving bitcoin in the backseat. The company was founded earlier last year by Halsey Minor, who is also the founder of CNET and cofounder of Salesforce. Bitreserve offered a wide range of features allowing users to transfer bitcoin and also convert bitcoin to other currencies and even commodities (precious metals).
Bitreserve has come a long way in less than a year, with introduction of various bitcoin-currency pairs and more. Now, Bitreserve is up for yet another massive change, a change so bit that Bitreserve will cease to exist. Yes, that’s right. Bitreserve has now changed its name to Uphold and it has also made a lot of changes to its operations as well.
Until now, people needed to have bitcoin to use Bitreserve platform, but things have changed with Uphold. Users can now directly transfer funds to their Uphold account using either bank transfer or credit and debit cards. Currently users from about thirty different European Union nations can make use of the new features included in Uphold. Soon people from the United States and China will also be able to make use of these services by the beginning of next month. This means, Bitreserve is not limited to bitcoin anymore and users can start using fiat currency instead of bitcoin on the platform. It is still not unsure how it will affect the existing bitcoin users and whether Bitreserve will make it easier for those with bitcoin stored on the platform to withdraw or not.
Bitreserve users have started receiving emails from Bitreserve announcing the change in company’s name and inclusion of new features to the platform. At the time of publishing, Bitreserve website was down, with a message “Bitreserve is currently down for maintenance” displayed on the homepage.