Digital Currency Wallet Abra Adds Direct Support for ETH Instead of as Asset Derivative

Digital currency wallet and exchange Abra has launched native Ethereum (ETH) support, according to an official blog post published on March 12.

Users will now be able to receive, hold, sell and buy ETH directly from the Abra wallet, as well as use the altcoin as an on-ramp to invest in other Abra-listed crypto and fiat currencies — over 30 crypto assets and 50 fiat currencies.

These include Abra’s recently-listed BIT10 Index token, which tracks the ten largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.

As the Abra blog post outlines, up until now, Abra had only supported Ethereum as a so-called “synthetic asset” — an investment mechanism that creates crypto-collateralized contracts so that users could gain exposure to the altcoin’s price movements, but not hold the coin itself.

Abra CEO Bill Barhydt has given a short statement, noting that Ethereum support “sets the stage for Abra to launch native ERC-20 support, in particular a whole bunch of [ERC20-based] stablecoins, that we’re excited about.”

As reported, Barhydt has recently said that even as the Abra wallet service gains traction as an investment platform, the company — as many crypto firms, he suggested —— is yet to conquer the sphere of crypto-enabled consumer cross-border payments and remittance services at scale.

Last month, Barhydt said he believes that private — or permissioned — blockchain networks will eventually “fail miserably,” comparing them with the now-defunct concept of the private extranet from the 1990s, which similarly restricted access to an authorized set of users.