how uphold works
uphold is a digital money platform offering financial services to a global market it was founded in 2014 by halsey minor and officially launched the following year originally named bitreserve the platform was rebranded as uphold the company says it s not a bank rather it credits itself as being the world s first and only real time transparent and fully verifiable reserve 12uphold offers 40 equities 27 fiat currencies four types of precious metals and more than 130 cryptocurrencies 345 users can send funds to other people and trade over multiple assets from one screen they can also move funds from one form of value to another in one easy step for example users can go from dash to xrp in one step on some other platforms this trade would involve two separate transactions and two separate fees 6the stated goal is to reduce the transaction costs involved in exchanging money particularly for cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin 7 in the earliest years of cryptocurrencies those wishing to hold and trade in the currency often faced a steep learning curve unlike traditional currencies whose infrastructure developed slowly over centuries cryptocurrency enthusiasts and entrepreneurs needed to develop their own infrastructure from scratch the company has similar initiatives to reduce transaction fees it claims that it is less expensive on average than other household name cryptocurrency platforms indeed the company has moved to commission free pricing the price that users see before they trade is the price they pay when they trade 8third party developers are able to develop additional software offerings based on the uphold platform this is made possible through uphold connect the company s application programming interface api 8uphold exchange feesmany cryptocurrency traders share a desire to increase the transparency of these financial platforms uphold was inspired in part by the lack of financial transparency revealed by the 2007 2008 financial crisis one practical example of this commitment is that uphold publishes its reserve status in real time showing the individual asset and liability balances for its tier 1 tier 2 and tier 3 reserves the company is audited quarterly to verify solvency 9for cryptocurrencies uphold offers an all inclusive guaranteed price that includes a small spread of typically 50 to 100 bps 0 5 to 1 0 depending on your individual trading behavior and volumes the spread can be as low as 40 bps 0 4 the company also offers free debit and credit card deposits and zero withdrawal fees with the exception of standard network fees on cryptocurrency networks 8in march 2018 uphold added the cryptocurrency ripple xrp to its platform offering uphold members zero transaction fees on the first five million xrp purchased 10 this move represented a bold entry into the xrp marketplace as coinbase one of the world s largest digital currency exchanges did not support xrp at that time uphold operates on a fully reserved basis this means its obligations are fully backed by the assets it holds in reserve by contrast the standard practice among modern banks is the so called fractional reserve model in which banks often retain only a small percentage of the assets given to them by depositors those assets that are not retained by the bank are instead lent out to customers or invested in order to obtain a higher return requirements for uphold