CoinJar Announces Low Fee Hedged Accounts

“Hedged Accounts are great for people who want to start out with bitcoin for practical purposes but don’t want to manage it actively or worry about price volatility,”
— – CoinJar CEO, Asher Tan.

The new accounts will allow Coinjar users to keep their bitcoins at a stable value, eliminating concerns over bitcoin’s notorious price volatility. If a user pegs their bitcoin when the BTC/USD price is $215, no matter how much time passes or where bitcoin’s price goes, that person will have the purchasing power of $215.

CoinJar is joining bitcoin startups Coinaplut and BitReserve, in offering services for dealing with bitcoin’s volatility. Coinapult was the first company to offer such a product when they launched “Locks” in July of 2014. Locks allows you peg your bitcoins to the dollar, euro, sterling, silver or gold.

Towards the end of the year, BitReserve launched their pegged product but added an extra layer of transparency by showing real time reserves, and the company’s current financial obligations. BitReserve is also looking to expand their list of pegs, including oil later this year.

CoinJar differentiates itself in many ways. CoinJar is an exchange, not a payment startup or reserve. So CoinJar users can buy bitcoin and in seconds tie their bitcoins to the price of one of the fiat currencies offered. They will also see their hedged accounts in the CoinJar trading dashboard, next to their normal accounts.

Fees also differ among the three services. Coinapult charges a 2 percent fee for locking and unlocking your bitcoins. BitReserve’s fees vary per peg. The fees range from 0.45 percent to 2.45 percent. An additional fee is charged when you convert currencies.

CoinJar doesn’t charge any fees for converting your bitcoin into their hedged accounts. It is also free to convert one hedged account into a different type of hedged account – like from USD to EUR. However, when you convert the hedged account into actual cash, you are charged a one percent fee.

The announcement of hedged accounts comes fresh of the hells of the launch of CoinJars IOS app earlier this month. The app was designed to make daily bitcoin purchases easy and the new hedged accounts will be added to the app.

The company is also in the process of moving from Melbourne Australia to their new headquarters in London, England. According to Tan, the move is due to London’s friendlier environment for financial technology startups.