Cointext has announced that its bitcoin cash wallet service has just launched in the Ukraine and Italy. Cointext is now connected to 35 countries worldwide and the wallet works on any smartphone as well as basic feature phones.
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Cointext Connects to the Ukraine and Italy
is a cryptocurrency wallet that provides users with the means to send bitcoin cash (BCH) through SMS technology (text messages). The wallet gives any text-enabled mobile phone the ability to send and receive BCH without an internet connection. The company has been adding supported countries to its list over the past few months, and on Monday Cointext added service to the Ukraine and Italy. The two new regions bring the total number of countries that are Cointext connected to 35.
Because the application doesn’t require registration and all it takes to use the app is a valid text command, anyone from the supported 35 territories can send bitcoin cash via SMS. After the Ukrainian and Italian services were activated, Cointext founder and CTO Vin Armani shared some notable pictures of people in Ukraine sending BCH through text on basic feature (Nokia-style) phones.
“Cointext allows anyone with a cellular signal to access cryptocurrency — This includes all brands of smartphones and about two billion people with basic feature phones,” Armani explained.
The Cointext founder continued:
Ukraine is experiencing political instability and Italy is facing a sovereign debt crisis. Cryptocurrency provides residents with a way to opt out, and Cointext provides them with the easiest tool to begin using cryptocurrency.
1.7 Billion Unbanked and 2 Billion Basic Feature Phones
By referencing the Cointext website, users in the Ukraine, Italy, Argentina, France, Hong Kong, Ireland, United States, Netherlands, Sweden, Puerto Rico, and other countries can locate their to use the service. In order to get a wallet, users simply text the word “receive” to the access number to get a fresh BCH address. Cointext uses a variety of other text commands to send funds to another address, and another command to read the wallet’s balance as well.
Another Ukrainian instantly transacts without Internet using a Nokia 3310!
Are you ready to spread adoption?
— CoinText (@CoinText)
BCH proponents like applications that give people the means to interact with bitcoin cash using any text-enabled phone. This is because concepts like Cointext could bring cryptocurrency accessibility to the 1.7 billion unbanked individuals worldwide. African telecom companies have been experimenting with services like Mpesa for years, giving citizens in the region the ability to leverage text-based payments. Because the Cointext service allows individuals to send and receive BCH onchain via SMS, it operates in the same manner as Mpesa. In the African continent, however, the Cointext service only supports South Africa right now. Cointext has the most presence in regions throughout Europe, the U.S., and South America.
What do you think about the Cointext application? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.
Images via Shutterstock, Cointext, and Twitter.
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A quarterly ratings report has upgraded the score previously given to seven cryptocurrency exchanges, while downgrading four. It has also added seven new exchanges, rating them on such metrics as trading volume, security, and compliance. In related news, Crypto Exchange Ranks (CER) has begun tracking the hot and cold wallets of exchanges as part of a drive to champion greater transparency.
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Okex Downgraded, Bithumb Upgraded
Cryptocurrency exchange ratings, much like cryptocurrency ratings, are highly subjective. Any attempt at rating and ranking the constituents of a particular set using specific benchmarks is bound to cause controversy. Nevertheless, quarterly ratings reports continue to grow in popularity and in number while shining the spotlight on various verticals within the cryptocurrency ecosystem. latest report tracks the progress of crypto exchanges over the past three months, amid difficult market conditions.
Tokeninsights’ exchange rating criteria
Unique visitors have dropped across the board during the last quarter, with the sole exception of Bithumb, whose traffic and aggregated score has risen. Okex, by way of comparison, has seen its weighted score fall, exacerbated by the fact that it “has repeatedly unilaterally changed its trading rules during our rating period, including data rollbacks and modifying its contract delivery rules.” The report continued:
In the case of the BCH hard fork, Okex delivered the last transaction price of BCH contract ahead of schedule at 16:05 p.m. on November 14, 2018 (GMT+8), and issued an announcement only one hour in advance, causing unnecessary losses to a large number of investors.
Hitbtc, Kraken, and Kucoin all saw their ratings upgraded by Tokeninsight, while Poloniex and Gemini were among the exchanges given ratings for the first time.
Trans-Fee Mining Exchanges Score Poorly
Transaction fee mining exchanges, often linked with wash trading and fake volume, have scored poorly in Tokeninsight’s report. Hong Kong’s Fcoin exchange is one such casualty, its score lowered, with the report noting how “Transaction mining trends once brought a large amount of traffic to the platform, due to the notion that the vast majority of transactions of transaction fees or dividends were free, and transaction volume has dropped significantly in the past three months. In terms of compliance, Fcoin has lagged behind in development and has not obtained any license of relevant regulatory agencies.”
The CER dashboard, showing hot and cold wallet balances for Bittrex.
Exchange analytics service Crypto Exchange Ranks has been instrumental in uncovering on Asian platforms such as Fcoin, Coinbit, and GDAC. Its latest initiative involves launching a for crypto exchange transparency. CER is seeking the help of “transparency hackers” to help it identify and then track the hot and cold wallets of all leading cryptocurrency exchanges.
The is already populated with wallet balances for several major exchanges. Results can be filtered according to the size of the exchange wallet, and clicking on the wallet balance will reveal the distribution between hot and cold wallets, where such information is available. Eventually, CER hopes to add this data for every exchange, and in doing so to bring greater transparency to the sector through a combination of self-reporting and public diligence.
Do you think ratings reports incentivize exchanges to provide greater transparency and to act ethically? Let us know in the comments section below.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Tokeninsight, and CER.
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