Monzo and Cryptocurrency

When I joined Monzo I thought the app was very similar to Crypto phone apps/debit cards but without the crypto. I believe bitcoin and cryptocurrency is revolutionary.

I am very sceptical about cryptocurrency in general. I have some experience with it: I accepted Bitcoin over-the-counter in my pubs for a number of years and accidentally made a fair bit of money doing so.

A friend of mine has written a book about it which I thoroughly recommend: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/

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In my opinion the ability to buy, store and spend major cryptocurrencies would truly make Monzo a cutting edge bank and compete favourably with current cryptocurrency debit cards like Wirex, Cryptopay etc.

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Agreed. With UK banks shunning cryptocurrency, Monzo could easily be ahead of the game and their app is ideally suited to and not unlike other crypto card apps.

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This is a very good idea. I wanted to try Revolut but was being lazy, Iā€™ll give it a go just to see how they pull it off.
While weā€™re on cryptocurrency and Monzo, I signed up for an app called Monaco after their ICO. What I noticed straight away was how their UX (however much there is yet) is very similar to Monzoā€™s. Might be worth a look.

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Has there been any thought on this by Monzo? After the increased publicity bitcoin and other crypto currencies I decided to dip my feet in and invested Ā£700 via Revolut and dare I say it (regrettably) Iā€™m massively surprised at how easy it was to buy litecoin, bitcoin, ETH and just swipe my finger and view my balances in GBP, litecoin, bitcoin etc and transfer it back to Ā£ in a instant if I wanted to or another listed currency. I had tried to invest using whatever other sites offer it but it was way too confusing for somebody like me. Having to join a few different sites, wait forever for your ID to be confirmed, wait ages for your transaction to go though, then probably transfer it into some sort of wallet. Then again days to return it to cash if you wanted. Plus the fees.

I do love Monzo but I canā€™t see myself being a profitable customer for them after reading other posts on how to cut costs. I pay using credit card for most things, currently I have hardly any spare cash after just buying a cheap investment property aboard to rent out so no balance on Monzo for them to earn interest. Any spare funds I tend to invest in p2p sites and Iā€™m seriously unlikely to ever use the overdraft when I have credit cards with zero debt. If Monzo were to consider Cryptocurrency then theyā€™d make a decent income stream from the customer profile like myself who doesnā€™t rely on a overdraft. Revolut charge 1.5% per transaction and I gather thereā€™s a huge amount of people buying and selling every few mins so thereā€™s huge money to be made compared to limiting yourselfs to mainly just overdraft fees IMO.

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The thing that worries me about revolut and crypto is that whilst they are currently making hay, the sun will not be shining on crypto for ever. Everyone is happy because they can skip in and out of the strong bull market in crypto, but any idiot investor can make money in a rising market.

When one of the 50% pullbacks happens and all these new investors want to cash out, I think revolut are going to have serious liquidity issues. And you canā€™t move your crypto to another exchange to get out either. I wouldnā€™t be surprised to see revolut prices diverge from the other exchanges on a big dip. At that point weā€™ll see how good their hedging is.

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Should we stop using banks then, because the original banks were liable to having their vaults raided by criminals? They are clearly much better now, as is Ethereum.

Not sure what your point is.

If revolut are not hedging their crypto exposure, they will either need enough liquidity to cope with everyone wanting to sell on the pullback or they will align sellers with buyers on their exchange and the price will diverge from other exchanges.

Banks have effectively infinite liquidity via the Bank of England.

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I was responding to your point about the DAO hack in Ethereumā€™s infancy.

Ahh, ok.

But banks didnā€™t start out saying that if criminals could raid the vaults using the existing rules they would be allowed the money and then change their minds later once a raid had happened.

Etherium was promoted as ā€˜the code is lawā€™. Then it wasnā€™t when the developers stood to lose out.

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I do see your point. The claim that cryptos are fully decentralised makes people think theyā€™re autonomous, whereas in fact developers can steer in a certain direction and make big decisions like that. I donā€™t necessarily think the same would happen today however.

Large banks have also historically screwed people over (I.e. Financial crashes, taxpayer bailouts).

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+1 from me. Iā€™m confident that blockchains and cryptocurrencies will revolutionise financial services over the coming years. I had a play around with Revolutā€™s crypto stuff and was super impressed. And despite being an investor in the first two crowdfunding rounds and a big believer in Monzo, Iā€™ll be using Revolut more and more over the next few months. Iā€™ve even subscribed to their premium account.

hello,

Any chance of Monzo adding support to buy cryptocurrency in the future?

Thanks

Unlikely at this time, weā€™re always open to reevaluating but right now, we donā€™t think we can offer much value in this area. Demand is also not very high compared to many other features that weā€™re working on. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Demand is also not very high compared to many other features that weā€™re working on.

Really? Iā€™m seeing a lot of replies come through on this thread lately and crypto is taking off big time. It would be easy to implement a wallet and a way to buy without a system to sell at first.

But of course, it is still understandable that the UK banking system is still trying itā€™s hardest to push against the economic revolutionā€¦ so Monzo probably has to tread carefully if it wants to hit itā€™s current roadmap.

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The huge flaw in this argument is that people who post on this forum are largely the early adopter crowd, who have an interest in financial technology.

Richard is correct - demand really is not high outside of that circle of people.

Our aim is to get everyone using Monzo. Everyone needs a bank account, and so therefore everyone should have access to a good, modern, fast, bank account.

Most people arenā€™t interested in buying and selling currency to make profit, or to hold different currencies at the same time because maybe the fx rate now is better than it will be in the future when you need to actually use that currency. If I look at the people I know personally (ie, my friends and family) who have Monzo accounts - Iā€™d wager that less than 2% of those people care about trading currencies, crypto or otherwise - and thatā€™s across all age and peer groups.

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Itā€™s a shame Monzo doesnā€™t see the potential in this. I would have thought new customers alone would make it worth it. As the bank of the future I hope it will be looked at and seriously considered as it would be a brilliant addition to many. Even just as a wallet to store.

I honestly thought this would be the case.

And like Simon said, we are all interested in finance. An average Joe, could be completely put off Revolut now that they have added support for Cryptocurrency. (although it isnā€™t pushed in your face - but crypto definitely attracts quite a small selection of people in comparison to more traditional investments)

Iā€™d love it as a feature, I really would. But, I can totally understand Monzo deciding against it.

In all fairness, Iā€™m quite interested to see what happens to the BTC price now. I have defended it for ages, but I have a feeling it isnā€™t going back up much higher than it currently standsā€¦ :frowning:ļø could be completely wrong!

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If we could hold bitcoins in a wallet directly linked in monzo, and if you have any mining contracts, thatā€™s pretty much the end of having to get a job!

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