Stablecoin company Tether and video platform Rumble released a non-custodial crypto wallet on Wednesday, allowing users to tip Rumble content creators in digital currencies.
The wallet will initially support Tether’s dollar-pegged stablecoin, USDt (USDT), Tether Gold (XAUt), a tokenized commodity product, and Bitcoin (BTC), according to an announcement from Rumble.
MoonPay will provide fiat currency on- and off-ramps for Rumble Wallet users, enabling them to cash out crypto into local currencies.
Tether and Rumble initially slated the wallet rollout for December, once code and user experience bugs were hammered out.
Cointelegraph reached out to Rumble and Tether but had not received a response at time of publication.
The integration of crypto tipping on Rumble promotes the use of crypto as a medium of exchange rather than market speculation or store-of-value use cases, which have come to dominate Bitcoin (BTC) and cryptos in general.
Crypto is emerging as the future of internet-native value transfer, but challenges remain
“Peer-to-peer payments powered by crypto are the future of the internet economy,” said Ivan Soto-Wright, CEO of crypto payments company MoonPay.
Bitcoin, the world’s first cryptocurrency, was designed as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, according to the Bitcoin whitepaper published by pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto.
However, low transaction throughput, with blocks forming about every 10 minutes and relatively high transaction fees, has kept it from being widely used as a payment method, especially for smaller purchases where the transaction fee eclipses the price of the good or service.
Currently, Bitcoin’s primary use case is as a store-of-value asset or a speculative instrument, with most users accumulating BTC and holding it long-term for price appreciation rather than spending it in commercial transactions.
Stablecoins, which are blockchain tokens backed by assets such as fiat currencies or government debt instruments, solved this problem by offering near-instant settlement times and relatively low transaction fees, enabling value to move across the internet on blockchain rails.
Despite the innovation of near-instant, cross-border value transfer, stablecoins still suffer from currency inflation of the underlying fiat currency, centralization and the risk of confiscation, critics say.
