On this episode of the CoinGeek Weekly Livestream, Orange Gateway CEO Hlynur Thor Bjornsson sat down with Kurt Wuckert Jr. to talk about making Bitcoin easier and more accessible for everyone.
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Iceland, BSV liquidity, and off-ramps
Orange Gateway is based in Iceland simply because the founders live there. They first discovered Bitcoin in 2009 after the financial collapse. In 2013, they spun up a company and started trading coins. Things progressed from there, and they began Orange Gateway with a pivot to BSV.
Wuckert points out the problem with BSV liquidity; there’s a limit to how much trading one can do as a result. He thanks Bjornsson for providing a service that addresses this and asks why he chose the small number of pairs he did. The answer is simple: they wanted to stay true to the BSV vision and had no interest in trading many other coins.
A decade-old banking relationship is one of the keys to Orange Gateways’ success. Due to this and strict regulatory compliance, they can act as an off-ramp, allowing people to withdraw fiat into their bank accounts. They now even offer buying Bitcoin with credit cards.
KYC compliance, customer activity, and stablecoins
What’s the threshold for KYC compliance, and what does the process look like? The threshold is €1,000 ($1,118) per month, Bjornsson says. This allows casual traders playing with that money to escape full KYC checks. After that limit, all documents are required.
Are there any day traders, or are people using it as an on/off ramp? They’re seeing more and more traders. They welcome it, but it will come slowly. They have a third-party market maker to operate the order book, and they’re looking for a more sophisticated partner to handle that role.
Wuckert mentions a few BSV stablecoins; MNEE on 1Sat Ordinals and the CHF one via the Centi platform. Is Orange Gateway looking to support them? Yes, they’re looking for ways to support these coins and have directly conversed with the MNEE people. The EU MiCA license guarantees license holders have real currency backing them, and Bjornsson believes this will create a lot of trust in these stablecoins.
Is there going to be an Orange Gateway app in the future? Yes, it’s in the works. As for payment app integrations, Apple Pay (NASDAQ: AAPL) is available for iPhone and Mac users, whereas Android users can use Google Pay (NASDAQ: GOOGL).
Real World Assets and alternative withdrawals
Wuckert thinks real-world assets will be a big deal in the future. He wonders if Orange Gateway is interested in them. Bjornsson says they’d much rather support 1,000 RWA tokens than 1,000 digital currencies. They’re even considering how a tokenized fish market might work in Iceland.
As a workaround for direct withdrawals, Orange Gateway is negotiating with its credit card partner to see if people can receive payments as prepaid credit cards. This would shorten the wait and cost of a wire transfer and allow people to spend their funds faster.
To hear more about Orange Gateway, the upcoming London Blockchain Conference, and the future of BSV, check out the live stream via this link.
Watch: Hlynur Thor Bjornsson maps Orange Gateway’s journey so far
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