Providing exchange services for 28 fiat currencies for Bitcoin

MonetaGo is a newly established Bitcoin trading company. Although the company is young, it has great ambitions. MonetaGo plans to expand its business to 40 countries around the world.

MonetaGo first announced in April that its platform would offer bitcoin exchange services for 28 fiat currencies. As a twist, MonetaGo users can also use bitcoin pegs.

Jesse Chenard, CEO of MonetaGo, said:

“Cryptocurrency is supposed to be a global phenomenon, so that money can be transferred seamlessly across borders. But in reality, around 90% of Bitcoin transactions are concentrated in just three countries.”

Chinard and his co-founders want to make bitcoin more accessible to new users outside of the three main markets of the U.S. dollar, Chinese yuan and euro.

MonetaGo’s interface is almost the same as other trading platforms. However, the platform underneath the MonetaGo interface uses Alphapoint technology. Through their API (application programming interface), the platform has received 35 orders from a regional partner exchange network.

Chinard said MonetaGo's goal is to have 50 partners by the end of 2015.

Fixed Price

MonetaGo is much like Bitreserve, allowing users to peg the price of Bitcoin to fiat currencies in 27 regions. However, Bitreserve does not offer cash-out services, that is, Bitdollars cannot be exchanged for real US dollars (only Bitcoin), but MonetaGo can.

MonetaGo users send this fixed-price bitcoin to other users, who can then exchange it for other currencies. This is good not only for consumers but also for businesses, says Chinard.

In addition to protecting both parties from bitcoin’s volatility, the process could speed up payments between companies that lack fast, reliable online banking.

Chinard said he still has a rational view on how people will use this "send" function. Now, the most important thing for MonetaGo is to maintain close contact with banks to ensure the smooth flow of fiat currency and transaction channels.

The platform announced that it would not charge user fees in the first few weeks, and would then charge a fee of 0.1% to 0.5% per trade based on each user’s monthly trading volume.

“If you do two transactions using the ‘Send’ feature, we’re going to cut that fee in half,” said Zinad.

Compliance

MonetaGo is privately funded by several investors, including Chinard himself.

Tremor Video, a company under Chinar, went public in 2013. MonetaGo's founding team includes Chinar's partner and chief marketing officer Ted Davis, former Alphapoint CEO Margaux Avedissian and others.

The MonetaGo team has been focusing on compliance since October 2014.

“I think this year we’ll get a lot more clarity on bitcoin regulation and what standards we should be meeting.”