One of the creeping payment apps for cryptocurrency that has gained popularity in Latin America is the Reserve. The platform serves as a convenient way for people to convert their local currencies, which may experience high inflation, into US dollars through the Reserve Stable Currency (RSV). The network also has Rtoken privileges (RSRs) that are used to control the protocol.
Since its launch in March, the platform reports that a total of 367,000 people have signed up for it. Meanwhile, the number of weekly active users has exceeded 100,000, most of whom are located in Argentina, Venezuela and Colombia. Over the last 30 days, the application has processed around 547,000 transactions. In addition, more than 8,000 companies headquartered in Venezuela now accept “reserves” as a form of payment for goods and services.
In a live demo of the Reserve app for Cointelegraph, Reserve chief Nevin Freeman withdrew dollars from the app’s personal US dollar account to a Venezuelan bolivar bank account, with RSV as intermediary. The transaction went through almost immediately, and the app requires no fees. Freeman claimed that users can use bolivars immediately, as with online transactions, or use their debit / credit cards to use cash. However, reserve-verified liquidity providers require spreads on the original currency transaction. Below is the full interview between Cointelegraph, Freeman and Reserve Community Manager Jens Michaels.
Cointelegraph: With the growth of the blockchain industry, there have been a number of payment solutions from cryptocurrencies to cryptocurrencies and from cryptocurrencies to fiat currencies. What, in your opinion, is unique about the Reserve Protocol?
Nevin Freeman: Reserve is a stablecoin wallet for cloud storage. We store cryptocurrencies in the background while users complete transactions in our database. In the future, we will switch to users across chains, but due to the [high] Ethereum gas prices, this is the only way to offer this utility in countries like Venezuela. Answering your question about what sets it apart from the others is the ability to deposit and withdraw money in all these different currencies. These first five options in the app represent the different methods of the Venezuelan bank for deposits and withdrawals; Argentine Peso, Panama Dollar, PayPal, Zelle, Uphold, Colombian Peso, Our Network Token (RSV) and many other cryptocurrency options that people use. We have recently added Axie Infinity tokens and many people in Venezuela are playing the role of Axie Infinity. So this is an easy way to convert money into dollars.
CT: How do Reserve customers help protect themselves against inflation in the countries above?
NF: It is common practice for Backup users to get their money and transfer the money to our stablecoin in dollars so that they do not have to worry about devaluing their money. And then, over the course of a week or a month, they will periodically make small transactions again in local currency to handle the local economy. And then, due to the ever-increasing number of sellers, we see more and more transactions that people do not need to come back to again; They can only pay directly in stable currency in USD.
So it’s not really rocket science. The concept is very simple. It’s just saving dollars and living in dollars, something many people want to do, but the change here makes this [mission] much easier and more accessible.
Let me add another interesting point: in Venezuela, for example, many transactions take place through Zelle, which is similar to the US banking method of quickly sending money between US bank accounts. All 1% in Venezuela have US bank accounts, and they all have a lot of money in their US bank accounts. So there are a lot of swap transactions going on with Zelle. So everyone in Venezuela would like to have a Zelle account. The bottom line is that you can only get a Zelle account if you travel to the US and create a physical US account. And many Venezuelans have no way of doing that. So the way many of our users look at the service is like it looks like a Zelle account, but anyone can open an account and that’s part of the appeal.
CT: So far we have mainly discussed RSV and fiat money, but what about the RSR token? What are your development plans?
NF: The main role of the reserve right symbol is control. A basket that supports any R-token, our name for reserve stablecoins, should evolve over time. And you need a very safe and reliable way to handle this development in a decentralized way in the long run. Thus, RSR plays an important role in management. Another important role that RSR plays is to ensure some stable reserve currencies.
