Opera Browser Adds Bitcoin Payments – Geoffrey G
Opera is doubling down on its built-in digital wallet. Adding further features for cryptocurrency usage.
In July 2018, Opera took their first step into web 3.0. Adding decentralized blockchain and digital currency systems into their browser experience. Allowing Ethereum as the first crypto purchase channel.
The company has further announced that Bitcoin (BTC) payments can be sent and received, all within the platform. Continuing their pursuit of capturing the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) fanbase.
This is a huge development. Opera’s 350 million users now will be able to integrate crypto payments, for e-commerce, services and actions on the web.
Opera Crypto head Charles Hamel spoke on reasons why this direction was chosen;
” Most people have heard of bitcoin and thus we saw it as important to support it and make this feature more familiar to a larger group of people”
He also added,
“anyone in crypto, who wishes to move from storing tokens to spending. Would now have a viable built in option. Offering everything within the browser experience.”
Opera has been making strides in market share. Aiming to battle against browsing giants Safari, Chrome, Firefox and others. Only Brave browser (BAT) has followed a similar path, focusing on crypto and token-based advancement. Brave rewards users for watching ads, awarding crypto payment each time. The outcome resulting in daily user activity exceeding 2.5 million users.
For Bitcoin, more adoption is great. 350 million users will now have access to storing and spending bitcoin on an established platform. Opera has a small market share between the top browsers, reported to be 3% in September 2019.
Like Brave Browser, this may be a smart move towards increasing that number.
Opera have not said now they will educate new users about Bitcoin. But it is seen as an interesting development within the crypto industry.
Are you an Opera user? Will you be interested in a browser and crypto combo?
Let us know below.
Published at Thu, 24 Oct 2019 04:10:12 +0000
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