The Goldman Sachs funded Crypto Custodial service BitGo has joined the Universal Protocol Alliance, it was announced yesterday. The Universal Protocol Alliance is a group of companies promoting the Universal Protocol Platform that enables interoperability across blockchains.
One problem in the cryptocurrency economy is the walled gardens of the different coins and blockchains. One cannot use Bitcoin directly on the Ethereum blockchain, for an example. The Universal Protocol (UP) Platform enables these tokens to exist on the same platform in the form of “universal tokens”.
Utilizing smart contracts, these tokens represent their counterparts on the UP Platform blockchain. Recently, they launched a Bitcoin-UP Platform Token called Universal Bitcoin. They also launched two stablecoin UP Platform tokens: The Universal Dollar (UPUSD) and the Universal Euro (UPEUR).
They plan to add more in the future.
BitGo is a custodial service that is used by Coinbase but can also be used on its own. It creates web-wallets that have a lot more security than your traditional web wallet, making it a safer place to store some crypto.
While even sites like BitGo can’t match the security of a hardware wallet or even paper wallets, they do provide immensely more security than your average web wallet. This is important because not everyone can be expected to follow cryptocurrency best practices. And Bitcoin will have to appeal to those people if we want it to take off in a major way.
BitGo joins Uphold, Brave, Cred, Blockchain at Berkeley, and FBG Capital as a member of the Universal Protocol Alliance. BitGo plans to add that level of security to the UP Platform, CEO Mike Belshe explains in the press release.
“We’re pleased to be supporting a standard that can help move the crypto community forward by solving issues of interoperability and the safeguarding of crypto assets[.]”
The UP Platform will make it easier for institutional investors to get into cryptocurrencies. It will give them tools they are used to. For an example, it could allow them to borrow fiat against their crypto assets.
The UP Platform could also be used by exchanges, making it easier to add trading pairs by representing them with Proxy tokens on the UP Platform.
Of course, the next step is to add more proxy and universal tokens to the UP Platform. That, and as is an issue with pretty much every crypto project: scaling.
“We’re thrilled to welcome BitGo’s support of the Universal Platform standard and its family of Tokens”, said Dan Schatt, Chairman of the UP Alliance in a press release. “BitGo’s experience and thought leadership will help support the Alliance scale its services to support the growing retail and institutional crypto community.”
We will have more as the UP Platform develops.
https://coinjournal.net/bitgo-joins-universal-protocol-alliance/
