Digital Money Platform Doubles Bitcoin Volume Amid Pandemic

Since March, many U.S. companies posted losses and worker layoffs from COVID-19 prevention-related shutdowns, while some companies saw signifiant growth. San Francisco-based startup Uphold, with its digital platform giving global customers a place to exchange in and out of cryptocurrencies, national currencies and other assets, saw 375% more new customers in the first quarter of 2020 than the same time period last year.

“Our projected revenue for 2020 is approximately 240% of 2019 revenue,” Uphold CEO JP Thieriot told me in an April 24 email. The first quarter of 2020 also yielded 250% more bitcoin trading volume than the first quarter of 2019, when traded against the U.S. dollar, an Uphold representative told me via email.

[Ed note: Investing in cryptocoins or tokens is highly speculative and the market is largely unregulated. Anyone considering it should be prepared to lose their entire investment.]

After the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 12, 2020, mainstream financial markets tumbled drastically. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (Dow) fell 10% on the same day, making for the stock index’s bloodiest single-day outing since the crash of 1987, according to CNBC reporting. In the days following, U.S. governing bodies further pushed business closures and shelter-in-place guidelines in an effort to combat the spread of COVID-19, slowing economic progression.

Some companies, such as Amazon

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, however, have seen business boom as citizens stay home, looking to online shops to deliver their goods. Uphold, a marketplace for buying and selling cryptocurrencies, fiat currencies (national currencies), precious metals and other assets, has also seen tremendous growth through the storm.

Several days before COVID-19 measures took flight, Uphold unveiled its new debit MasterCard

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, funded by an account capable of holding various assets on Uphold’s platform. Essentially, funds held in a user’s multi-asset Uphold account are exchanged into cash for whatever the user buys at the point of sale when using the card, a March 5 statement from the company said. Compatible at any MasterCard-friendly locations, Uphold’s card also allows for ATM cash withdrawals.

At the time of the March 5 announcement, interested U.S. customers could pre-order the card. “Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve started releasing the card to our substantial waitlist, and the early figures are MUCH better than we were budgeting,” Thieriot told me on April 24.

Although the card’s unveiling came during a comparatively standout financial quarter for the company, providing an additional avenue for mainstream crypto and other asset adoption and usage, Thieriot said the debit card was not the main growth driver for 2020’s first quarter.

“The rising numbers are certainly more due to COVID-related volatility and market dynamics than the release of the card,” Thieriot said. “The novel coronavirus has turned the digital payments space on its head.”

Uphold also saw XRP trading volume against the U.S. dollar up 150% in the first quarter of 2020 compared to 2019’s first quarter.

Uphold is not the only outfit to see a spike in numbers around this time, however. Data from analytics company Skew showed record bitcoin options trading volume on February 11 and March 9 for LedgerX, Deribit, Bakkt, OKEx and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) — some of the industry’s top exchanges hosting bitcoin trading — CoinDesk reported on March 10.

Crypto exchanges in general saw a 61% jump in bitcoin trading volume between January and March 2020, compared to volumes seen between October and December of 2019, The Block reported on April 5.

Disclaimer: I actively trade cryptocurrencies, as well as hold a small amount of BTC, ETH, LTC, XMR, NEO, ZEC, BEAM, BCH, DASH, LINK, XTZ and various insignificant other altcoin positions.