Reddit & Whatsapp To Incorporate Crypto On Their Platforms

Cryptocurrency and blockchain technology continues to grow mainstream with the news of the world’s largest chatting app, WhatsApp, and popular community platform, Reddit, finally accepting cryptocurrency in their databases. Is this the start of the entire Web 2.0 space adopting blockchain technology as we head towards the Web 3.0 landscape?

WhatsApp Deploys Crypto Payments In The U.S

Mark Zuckerberg and his companies have had a big role to play in the Web 3.0 sector. In October, Zuckerberg announced the rebranding of Facebook as Meta, in a move towards the metaverse. Since then, many cryptocurrencies that have been built around metaverse-related gaming and technology have soared to crazy highs, such as Decentraland’s token, Mana.

But now, the Meta-owned chat app, WhatsApp is going to be deploying crypto payments via chat, in the United States. Meta will be using the crypto wallet Novi and the stablecoin Pax dollars (USDP) in order to integrate cryptocurrency payment for all local WhatsApp users in the country.

The goal is to set up a very easy-to-use navigation system within WhatsApp to make payments in digital crypto assets. This feature is rumoured to be accessed within the chat of the person you are looking to send the crypto to. Popping up as an icon, a user will simply have to insert the amount to the person the payment is being disbursed to, the crypto wallet Novi will then act as an intermediary, thereby allowing people to access the payment from their own crypto wallets. So, around 350 million users will get access to cryptocurrency as a payment method on WhatsApp, as long as they own a cryptocurrency wallet.

Novi’s head, Stephanie Kasriel commented on this partnership and had the following to say.

“Since we introduced the Novi pilot just six weeks ago, we’ve been able to test and learn which features and functionality are most important to people, and focus on making those even better”.

She even commented on users’ growing fears over security issues on WhatsApp and ensured customers that the end-to-end encrypted system that the wallet uses makes it impossible for the company to gain any access to the user’s personal messages or calls.

So with the world’s biggest messaging chat platform allowing one of the largest countries in the world to use crypto as a payment option, do you think this will have a positive effect on the worldwide markets? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Reddit Expanding The Crypto Community

Another huge online community that has joined the cryptocurrency space is Reddit. But the company is effectively looking to tokens and crypto in their rewards system. In case you are unfamiliar with Reddit, the company gives users options to be a part of millions of different communities that focus on a wide range of topics. These communities are known as ‘sub-Reddits’.

Those who comment and share on the subreddits can often be rewarded in digital rewards, which do not account for anything, but this whole process is about to change. Recently, Reddit picked up the Ethereum scaling solution, Arbitrum, to scale its community points program, so the platform could give users access to crypto-related rewards. On December 9, Reddit officially launched its new website, which gives users the opportunity to participate in their community points beta program.

This will give users access to the crypto points, which up until now can be used to purchase various paid features on the platform and even engage in community governance. Similar to how staking in cryptos allows investors to have a vote or say in important community-related discussions, Reddit’s crypto points will give users the same access.

But with the scaling solution that Reddit is using, the company is looking to figure out a way to scale the implementation of crypto as money that can be cashed out in the coming years. With Arbitrum, the goal is to make it possible for users to actually withdraw the points as real-world crypto, which will be sent on their cryptocurrency platforms. This could take a while, but this would have to be one of the coolest initiatives we have seen related to crypto adoption.

So far, we are seeing buzz from Bitcoin thanks to MicroStrategy’s almost $100 million investment and the spread of cryptocurrencies across some of the biggest retail and e-commerce platforms in the world. While cryptocurrency markets are bearish in the short term, these huge updates may be major factors that bring some growth in the cryptocurrency space.