Abra, the world’s maiden global investment app, has announced today 27 May 2019 that it is opening a bitcoin-centric investing in Exchange Traded Funds and traditional stocks to over 150 countries.
The idea could be seen as the first in the industry since the platform opens investors outside the U.S. (over 150 countries) to use Bitcoin to invest in ETFs and stocks. The innovation is Abra’s aim to increase the adoption of Bitcoin.
According to Bill Barhydt, the CEO and founder of Abra, people outside the U.S. do not have the opportunity to invest in financial markets, which is a basic tool to developing personal wealth.
He said access to financial market and affordability hampers people from investing in ETFs and stocks.
Through the platform, investment is affordable and easy to achieve in the sense that Abra opens users to a fractionalised investment model where users can put in a minimum of $5/investment.
The same way investors have the opportunity to own a portion of cryptocurrency, through Abra, users can as well have a fraction of expensive ETFs and stocks.
Trading on ETFs and stocks on the platform is free till 2019 ends, and there are over 50 ETFs and stocks on the investment platform.
Available stocks on the platform are Berkshire Hathaway, Netflix, Google, Amazon, Apple, Uber, Tesla, among others. Oil and SPDR Gold Trust are the available commodities while Russell 2000, Real Estate, S&P 500, Vanguard Growth are the available indexes.
Willie Wang, VP of Abra product said he’s thrilled to unveil the first of its kind investment app to those that have been fenced out of investing in financial market.
The platform offers a non-custodial wallet, which implies that users keys and crypto are saved on the Bitcoin blockchain for secured and private transactions.
Users who intend to start using the platform need to download the app on Google Play or Apple Store, and then create account.
As well, users can invest using credit cards, banks, wire transfer and cryptocurrencies. Abra allows people to invest in nothing less than 30 crypto assets, 50 fiat currencies. Soon, 50 traditional equities will launch on the platform.
Bitcoin Adoption
Abra’s decision will increase the usage of cryptocurrencies especially Bitcoin across the globe. The idea will increase trust in cryptocurrency and bring in more people from far and wide.