Hoard, a multi-currency crypto wallet which will eventually offer integrated buying, selling, and point of sale features has just announced it’s impending beta release. The company plans to be a competitor to Coinbase, as well as offering the ability for shoppers to use the app to make purchases using crypto and have the seller receive crypto or fiat. Read on as we go over Hoard and it’s upcoming beta release.
What is Hoard?
According to it’s white paper, Hoard is “a set of financial tools built to make cryptocurrency investing, trading, payments and storage simple, accessible, and consumable by everyone.”
The Hoard homepage, hoardinvest.com
The goal of the project is to create an easy to use and highly flexible app that encourages those new to cryptocurrency to be able to quickly and easy get involved. The company suggests that the current batch of cryptocurrency apps are “complex” and “stifle consumer adoption”. The final Hoard app is designed to allow future customers to “Buy. Trade. Sell. Track. Spend. Store. All in one integrated wallet”.
The company is led by CEO Jason Davis, who was a former UX designer for Wells Fargo and a former VP of product for LegalHub.
Hoard beta incoming
In a recent blog post, the company announced that their app will soon be entering a beta release phase. The announcement comes after about a year of wait since the company first went live.
According to the announcement, the beta will allow participants to access the platform, store supported crypto assets, and sign up for an impending token sale (accredited investors only).
What is most interesting about Hoard is their promised feature of being able to trade or exchange any cryptocurrency for any other. More surprising than that, the white paper claims that users will eventually be able to trade any cryptocurrency (that the platform supports) directly into fiat currency. If this offering comes true, it could significantly change the way people interact with crypto to fiat exchanges.
For in-depth guides on many top exchanges, check out our series here
The other major planned feature that will go live when the final product is released is support for point of sale systems. Apparently, shops that support the Hoard app will be able to accept any form of payment that the platform supports, and receive any type of payment (fiat or crypto) that the seller wants. For example, if Hoard supports Dash, a buyer could buy something with Dash, and the seller could choose to receive all of their payouts in another supported altcoin like Litecoin, or just get fiat directly.
But how will this be possible? This is what the white paper says their “any-to-any cryptocurrency exchange enables traders to trade any cryptocurrency for another cryptocurrency. This disrupts the status quo of only trading limited pairs of BTC, ETH and USDT.”
Legal concerns?
As the company wants to compete with Coinbase, they could be facing a number of legal hurdles before they are able to allow their users to freely transact in crypto and crypto-to-fiat pairs. The largest potential concern would be if the company were required to get the same sort of licenses that a bank would need.
The official website does not specifically say where the company is based, but the white paper states their aims to be a “US based MSB business”, to get a “Bitlicense” in New York, and to “legally file in all 50 states”.
Thankfully, the US government has made several suggestions that they will not intentionally stifle or hinder cryptocurrency innovation within its boarders. However, the laws are in many cases still extremely vague.
One example to consider would be Utah-based Salt Lending. The company initially promised that anyone in the US would be able to get a cryptocurrency-backed cash loan. This quickly changed when the company announced that only those who resided in a very small list of states would be eligible for loans for the foreseeable future.
It is possible, though, that Hoard may be able to use these kinds of events as a way of avoiding these issues before they become problems. It would be reasonable to expect, however, that the company will be unable to do a uniform nationwide rollout, and instead could launch state-by-state.
Hoard to offer OAR tokens in upcoming TGE
The company plans to offer its own token, OAR, in an upcoming sale. Unfortunately, the company has specified that only accredited investors will be able to participate.
The tokens themselves will be used to allow customers to “invest, hold and use any currency they deem fit, circumventing any physical or digital borders” while using Hoard. In layman’s terms, it would appear that OAR tokens will be used to somehow speed up off-chain transactions and trading, and give the platform the liquidity it needs to operate.
For the holder, the white paper claims that they will be “incentivized to “hoard” our currency so they may transact freely with any other currency.”