Cash App is making crypto accessible to tons of new users, but right now they only have support for one token. Sadly, Bitcoin’s top contestant, Ethereum isn’t supported on Cash App, but it’s still pretty easy to convert your tokens thanks to the Withdrawal feature. With that said, here’s everything you need to know to turn Bitcoin to Ethereum from Cash App.
Bitcoin
Bitcoin is the most notable of all cryptocurrencies — it’s the one that started it all.
Bitcoin finally makes its way to a viral TikTok video
TheWolfofBitcoins posted a Bitcoin themed TikTok video two days ago that has garnered over 1 million views. The video was him walking into a room filled with GPUs as the popular ‘lalala‘ by bbno$ and y2k song played in the background. He captioned it, “This is why GPU prices went up.”
First viral Bitcoin TikTok ? pic.twitter.com/JtFCmYF7ST
— Tom (@ThomasSchuIz) December 15, 2019
I’m not sure if this is a testament to more crypto enthusiasts using TikTok or PC fans. You can look at the TikTok’s popularity in two ways, either people are jealous of the huge mining rig or just impressed that he has that many GPUs.
Either way, the video came off to me as a bit outdated as GPU prices have come down in recent years, and the supply has risen. In modern times, ASICs, or chips specialized for solving mining algorithms have gained popularity and are highly competitive in performance. People definitely still use GPUs, but they are not the only option as they once were.
This is so much the case that the Ethereum community is considering implementing a change to their mining algorithm that makes more use of GPUs than ASICs, so that casual PC users don’t have to invest as much capital to start mining.
Ofcourse, a TikTok video like this won’t pump the price of Bitcoin, but maybe it will get some younger minds wondering about how mining affects the economics of their computer parts. Either way, it’s cool to see something like this with over a million views.
How to spend Bitcoin with your Cash App card
The Cash App card has many features such as discounts while shopping, direct deposits and instant transfers, but is there any way to spend that bit of profit your Bitcoin investment made?
The answer is: “sort of.” Cash App puts American users closer to spending their Bitcoin at stores than any other onboarding platform or exchange, but there is still a couple buttons that you will have to press.
How to sell your Bitcoin. Don’t worry, it’s quick.
Unlike withdrawing your Bitcoin, there are no extra security steps to sell it. As long as you are allowed to purchase Bitcoin, you will also be able to sell it.
- Navigate to the Bitcon/Stocks page, on the bottom right side of your app.
- Press sell, then select how much you would like to get rid of.
- Confirm the transaction. The fee should be around 2%
- Funds should instantly be in your account, now you can spend it.
Cash App is the fastest way to spend Bitcoin in the U.S.
In Europe, Coinbase has a debit card that allows you to choose between a variety of coins and spend them. Unfortunately, this is not allowed yet in the United States, and no other crypto exchange offers allows users to manage cash as closely to Bitcoin as Cash App does. Since Cash App allows direct deposits, one could receive payments from their employer through the app, immediately sell it for Bitcoin and be cash free until they need to make a purchase.
The only downside to this is that U.S. citizens pay “capital gains” taxes when selling assets for a profit. This can cost you 20% of the appreciated value depending on how much it is and what state you are in. Because of this, we recommend that you sell Bitcoin as infrequently as possible. At the end of the day, you will have to report all sales on taxes. Check out how to report Cash App Bitcoin transactions to the IRS here.
Harvard Business Review’s new blockchain book portrays Bitcoin skepticism
Alex Gladstein, CSO of the Human Rights Foundation, posted a picture of the back of Blockchain: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review. The Harvard Business
Review text was pretty dismissive of Bitcoin and clearly favored other blockchain uses.
“While the world is transfixed by Bitcoin mania, your competitors are tuning out the noise and making strategic bets on blockchain for business,” read the book, implying that
Bitcoin is a mere distraction in the world of Blockchain.Executive Director at zCash, Josh Cincinnati, replied with his two cents, “can confirm all business school takes on this will be terrible until it’s too late for them to be actually innovative.”
What type of blockchain tech is Harvard referring to?
It’s no surprise that we at Cryptocult believe that Bitcoin will be around for a while, but having attended an IBM blockchain presentation, I can see where HBR is coming from. Blockchain is great for automation, and established companies can invest in that use cases without worrying about token economics.
From a financial standpoint, it can be more cost effective for a huge corporation to build a blockchain network themselves. These networks will allow them to cut costs on labor, servers possibly decrease shrinkage. The best part is they already have funds those expenses, so they won’t have to worry about creating a token and hoping that it appreciates in value.
The nodes for corporate blockchain networks are the corporations themselves, so whoever contributes most to block validation gets paid equitably. At the same time, they can impose fees so that whoever uses the network the most has to contributes for their usage.
There’s room for decentralized and centralized networks
Essentially, we agree that corporate blockchain tech has its uses, but don’t think that it directly competes with decentralized networks. IBM’s blockchain network requires permission unlike decentralized networks. So it’s not like any small business can become a node and participate in the network, which leaves out a huge demographic.
At the same time, the services that big corporations are interested in aren’t services that grassroots blockchain enthusiasts are demanding. Most of the appeal to decentralized networks are in finance and DeFi is chugging along at a steady pace, improving and making features more accessible.
In this situation, HBR’s dismissiveness of Bitcoin seems just as unnecessary as crypto enthusiasts defensiveness. Nobody knows what blockchain tech will look like 10 years from now. Bitcoin and corporate networks could be thriving in the future, or both be dead and gone.
BAT price pumps after Brave browser hits user milestone - people aren’t impressed
A good day for an alt coin is when they preform a tiny bit better than Bitcoin. Brave browser hit 10 million monthly active users, and people are claiming that the price of its integrated Basic Attention Token (BAT) pumped because of the news.
Here’s a comparison between BAT and BTC on the 15 minute chart today:
BTC is at the top and BAT is at the bottom. I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t really jump for joy after seeing these results. Sure, BAT is a few more percentage points higher than BTC today, but it’s trading volume is $14 million dollars lower than a few days ago. In the typical altcoin fashion, volatility spikes mimic BTC almost as if they are the same asset.
With BTC volume sitting at $18 trillion and BAT volume at $46 million, it would be difficult that good BAT news could pump the BTC market. Usually, when BTC moves up, so do altcoins. Still, some Redditors on r/batproject are convinced that this move can be attributed to news about the Brave Browser.
“remember Bat token is one of the few tokens with a real use case via Brave and as such should grow as the Brave users increase,” said u/normanl29 on a post about the 4% price increase.
Surprisingly, most other comments on the post took the opportunity to point out how low the price is in the macro perspective.
“Yeah we saw what growth from 0 to 10M users did to the price…,” said u/punis1.
“thanks sold 100k,” u/coladh_samh responded.
Even Mike Dudas, who’s publication, The Block, reported on the increase of price mentioned that they haven’t found it to be worth entering the BAT system.
“Anecdotally, I’ve heard the payments are very low for publishers and users. We haven’t opted into the system, as it wouldn’t be material for us.,” Said Dudas.
Personally, I have tired using the Brave browser but on MacOS it seems to be lacking in many areas. There isn’t an easy to use PiP feature, battery life is worse than Safari, and when I turn on BAT rewards, video ads are sometimes a minute long or keep playing more ads until I refresh the page. I am the exact demographic who would love to support creators by donating BAT and wouldn’t mind running watching ads to earn money, but the browser keeps pushing me away, just like many others.