Nowadays we all have the possibility to send money across the planet with the use of the beloved technology called Blockchain. We simply generate an address that links to a wallet that’s part of either a person’s portfolio or a company’s treasure. Next thing we do is open up our own wallet, decide how much of our cryptocurrency we want to send, fill in the wallet address and press send. That’s as easy as it gets. The mechanics behind it are a bit more complex so we’re not going to dive into that today. Today we’ll focus on the size of these payments that are performed on the Bitcoin blockchain. These are not the cups of coffees we are talking about, but more so the exchanges and other mysterious whales playing games. 

5. 109,234 BTC — 20 November 2018

We start off strong with a transaction that was made last year in November. This transactions was performed from one wallet to another transferring over 500 million USD at the time in a matter of minutes. It’s impressive to say the least that it’s possible and nerve wracking at the same time for the person performing these transactions. Now, this wallet is allegedly aligned with Binance, one of the biggest exchanges currently up and running. Big Bitcoin whales entering and leaving their service is nothing new and the company stacking up on Bitcoin is neither. When scrolling through the Blockchain Explorer and chasing down these payments we see that most of these wallet do not currently still hold these big amounts. One thing that could be true is Binance moving around their funds from time to time to keep them ‘SAFU’. Because as a wise man once said; ‘Funds are safu’.

4. 130,004 BTC — 10 January 2019

This is where we get mysterious real quick. This wallet contains 118,804 BTC at this very moment which brings the owner of it to number 3 of the ‘bitcoin rich list’. The nature of this transaction, why it was done and from which person to another is unclear. After exploring the transactions a little we can see this person is still actively involved with his Bitcoin that went into his wallet back in January. Thing is, the coins went in from multiple addresses and have since then left towards multiple other addresses. With every couple of months a couple thousand BTC leaving the wallet and then moving on to smaller wallets, it could be part of a bigger organization. It may just be one of the major exchanges that’s using this as their cold wallet. We can all see what happens to the wallet, but we might never know who owns it.

3. 180.000 BTC — 7 March 2014 

This transaction has surpassed the mark of a hundred million dollars, even back in 2014. Today, that transaction would have been worth over 1.4 billion US dollars. Imagine Jeff Bezos sending over that kind of cash to one of his other accounts like it’s nothing. The thing here is, this wallet had contained over 200,000 BTC in total but is currently holding not a single Bitcoin. The last transaction was performed back in 2017 after a series of transactions chopping up the total amount of Bitcoin into smaller portions. One thing that’s suspected at this stage is the involvement in money laundering with the use of Bitcoin. The person kept transaction the Bitcoin into smaller wallets in tiny portions of the total wealth, which leaves no trace at the end. This could have been a way to transfer the money into FIAT-currency without leaving anyone suspecting a thing. 

2. 194,993 BTC — 22 November 2013

Back in 2013, Bitcoin was certainly not worth what it is nowadays. The entire landscape looked completely different. Not 3000 cryptocurrencies that we have today, but several hundreds of them with most of them being irrelevant compared to Bitcoin. The ruling exchanges were different as well back then. One of the major exchanges back in 2013, after the whole fiasco with Mt.Gox, was Bitstamp. An exchange that’s still up and running today as ‘the longest standing Bitcoin exchange’. To be fully compliant with regulations and all, especially after a series of breaches, Bitstamp underwent an audit. This is basically a procedure to prove you’re in the possession of the funds you claim to possess. In this case, probably a third party received all of the Bitcoin possessed by Bitstamp to verify their possession of the claimed funds and sent it back afterwards. Back then this meant to company owned more than hundred million in Bitcoin, but today that would’ve meant this company is holding over 1,5 billion dollars. Talking about Unicorns.

1. 500,000 BTC — 16 November 2011

This is around 3,5 percent of the total Bitcoin that is around these days, incredible to imagine that it had been transferred back in 2011 not knowing it would be that special nowadays. The person back in 2011 sending over 1 Million worth of Bitcoin over to another address would have never imagined that as of today, that transaction would be worth over 4 Billion US dollars. At the all-time high of Bitcoin back in 2017, this was close to 10 Billion dollars. Imagine sending over that kind of capital to someone else to miss a letter or number in the address, how would you feel then? After performing this huge transaction a ton of other transactions were made leaving around 100+ BTC in each wallet it went through. Finally, around 490,000 coins ended up in a wallet that’s marked as ‘Mt.Gox’. Let’s hope for the holder that his funds were not stolen during the breach and all of his funds are now gone.

One thing that’s interesting though, the wallet has suddenly received a donation from a wallet that’s marked as ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’. The wallet that’s linked to Satoshi has transaction linking back to 2009 that are marked with ‘Bitcoin Genesis’ which indicates that these are the very first transactions ever performed. Now, who this person is, we might never know. It sure as hell is very interesting.

With over 300,000 transactions happening every single day, there’s big and small transactions happening each minute. Where these big whales spend around 0.1 BTC in fees, that’s more than another person could ever own. The cool thing about the Blockchain is the fact that it’s open for anyone to have a look. We never see the big payments that occur between the banks or financial institutions, but we can now actually see this occurring. One thing for sure, eyes are on these big whales’ wallets. Whenever a sudden move happens, traders start to move their funds as well to beat the market to it. What would you do if you saw one of these transactions happening today?

Within our lovely planet, there are people born in very different situations in very different places. One person could see daylight in a hospital, where the other is born in their own home. Now, this home can vary from seizing, the family that lives inside the house and the location. The location is one important factor but not nearly as important as the family that you end up being raised by. It could be exampled by the route that Donald Trump took where he stated ‘My father gave me a small loan of a million dollars’, giving him the foundation to build out an imperium that eventually led him to the position where he is today. 

The other side of the coin is the situation of being born in a financially challenged family and country. Whereas within the more wealthy countries there’s always multiple layers of society that have you covered in hard times, yet in some countries, the situation is not so ordinary. Imagine your parents struggling to make ends meet while all around you the only thing you see is other in the same situation. In most of the described countries, the national currency is not the most stable gateway, thus cryptocurrencies being a great alternative. The thing is, you don’t have to capital to inject to actively start investing, how do you get started then?

Airdrops

Let me start off with airdrops, which are probably the easiest way of generating some currencies without having to spend a single dollar. An airdrop is simply the project behind the coin dropping their coin out of the air into the wallets of thousands of people. The reasoning behind this can vary but usually it’s simply a manner of spreading their coin across many wallet-holders for completing a few tasks. These tasks vary from sending out tweets, liking posts on Facebook or Instagram to more actively creating content in order to generate some value for the project. Most of these projects are listed on the multiple airdrop sites that have collaboratively hosted over 1000+ airdrops. The value of these airdrops reaches into the millions of dollars distributed to all the participants. 

Most of these airdrops will get you just a couple dollars worth of the specific coin, but it can go the opposite way. Let’s have a look at some of the most profitable airdrops so far;

• Oyster Pearl
  One project that has been increasing the popularity and has sparked sudden interest by thousands of people is Oyster Pearl. Back in 2017, the project did an exclusive airdrop to all those that subscribed to all of their channels and shared a few messages. All the participants received 2227 PRL tokens that weren’t worth that much at that time. A while later, the price went up, a lot. Whenever you managed to sell at the peak, your airdropped tokens, that you received for doing extremely simple tasks, could have been sold for $11,000 dollars.
  
• Stellar Lumens
  Stellar Lumens also known under their ticker, XLM, is known for doing airdrops. Back in 2017, they had airdropped $1000 dollars worth their XLM token per Bitcoin a person owned. This could have been worth at least the double, or triple at its peak. It’s unclear to say the exact reward as the airdrop happened gradually and was not the same for everyone. More recently, Stellar set a new record; The Biggest Airdrop Ever. They had decided to airdrop $125 Million worth of XLM tokens in partnership with Blockchain.Info to anyone that signed up. All you have to do is do a simple KYC process in order to participate. 

• Minereum
  Arguably the most profitable airdrop of all time; Minereum. It was a project that does not ring a bell to most people, but it had released its plan for a ‘self-mining smart-contract’ back in 2016. Now, those who had signed up and were early to the airdrop madness got lucky. They received around 32,000 MNE tokens that were worth a couple dollars back then. Being a project that had been around for a while, had big plans and simply looked interesting, lots of investors jumped on the bandwagon. At the peak, this airdrop was worth $440.000 dollars as the ATH for this coin was $14 dollars. Are you still holding this airdrop? Then it’d now be worth around $200 dollars. Not bad, but it could have been way more. 

It’s safe to say that there is money to be made in airdrops. One thing that should be mentioned though is the fact that these are exceptions to the rule. Most airdrops end up not being worth a dime. Anyone with an ETH-wallet probably has multiple obscure tokens airdropped into their wallet that are worth less than a cent. Airdrops is one thing, but what other ways are there?

Earn.Com

This is a fairly new service that has not been around for an extremely long time. It allows you to earn crypto for completing tasks, extremely similar to an airdrop. The difference here is, the Earn.Com tasks can be slightly more difficult than the ones you have to do during an Airdrop. They require less social media and more knowledge. In the mid-2018 Earn.Com had been acquired by Coinbase to launch a dedicated platform where people can educate themselves and earn crypto at the same time. A couple steps down here to get you going;

1. Create an account on Coinbase
2. Complete the KYC (Know Your Customer) process to validate your account
3. Go to https://www.coinbase.com/earn and follow the steps

That’s as easy as it gets. It doesn’t take much more than watching a couple of videos and then answering the questions correctly. The moment you have completed these questions you receive the tokens and you can start your cryptocurrency career. The tokens that are available for earning right now are; DAI, XLM, EOS, ZEC, BAT, and ZRX. These are some of the top projects that are now not worth that much. Now is the time to grab your chance and complete these steps. As we’ve seen with airdrops, what’s now worth a couple dollars could be worth a fortune in just a matter of time.

Affiliate Links

One thing that many industries have in common are; Affiliate links. Within the cryptocurrency industry, this is no different. There are links all across the board for people to use other people’s link in order to benefit from both sides. Referring to Coinbase for example, just browsing through their platform you receive a notification that referring a friend would earn you, and the friend, 10 dollars. Now the real money is in referring your friends to exchanges. 

Recently, Binance shared their numbers for their affiliate markets with their best-performing affiliate marketer that has owner over 1000 BTC until this date by simply referring people to Binance. What happens here is, you bring a new user to Binance, this new user starts trading and for each trade, you own a small percentage. If you manage to sign up thousands of people that end up making you a small percentage, it can add up pretty easily. This means, are you active online and do you have a following yourself? Start sending them some affiliate links, sit back and see the profits rolling in.

NOWPayments has recently launched an Affiliate Platform as well! You can get an easy reward by introducing the project to a merchant and get a percentage from every exchange that they make within the NOWPayments service. On top of that, the first twenty partners will receive $25 in NOW Tokens!

Cryptocurrency Lending

One other way of generating more cryptocurrency for simply holding your cryptocurrency is lending. This does require you to already own several cryptocurrencies. Let’s assume you have already completed some airdrops, went through the Coinbase Earn program and are fully set to expand your cryptocurrency portfolio. This can be done in many ways and on endless platforms, but to put it really simple; You put your tokens away for a set period and you earn more of these tokens for doing so. The downside here is that you do not have the access to it for the set period which means you can’t play into sudden dumps or pumps of the price. Down here a list of services that offer lending;

• Nexo 
• Binance
• Crypto.Com
• Bitfinex 

The rates vary per service and the requirements to start using their services as well, but in general, it could be quite lucrative. That’s a nice thing to dive into when you’ve earned yourself some cryptocurrencies.

Are you excited already?

Do you have the vision to get started now? Do you think you have what it takes to start exploring the cryptocurrency industry and start earning yourself some extra income? Today is the time. Search for some quality airdrops, spend some time doing a little research on Coinbase, share some affiliate links and eventually end up lending or staking the rewards that you got. It does not take that much to get started. We all want this industry to grow, one person at a time. 

In an era of modern technologies, making purchases over the Internet has become a necessity rather than a luxury. Paying with your MasterCard for your Amazon shipment is possibly the first thing that comes to mind, but as of 2019, this is definitely not the only way to pay for goods online. NOWPayments is a fee-free platform from the creators of ChangeNOW, which allows its users to accept payments in cryptos — for example, by integrating our widget into their website. 

The service works with some of the most popular cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC), Zcash (ZEC), Litecoin (LTC), Verge (XVG), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), TRON (TRX), DigiByte (DGB), Horizen (ZEN), TrueUSD (TUSD), EOS (EOS), FunFair (FUN), DigixDAO (DGD), GAS (GAS), Ethereum (ETH), Groestlcoin (GRS), Bitcoin Gold (BTG), BNBMainnet, Stellar (XLM), Komodo (KMD), DASH (DASH), Waves (WAVES), Cardano (ADA), Ripple (XRP), Monero (XMR), BinanceCoin (BNB), NEO (NEO), ZCoin (XZC), Paxos (PAX). NOWPayments makes sure to keep up to date with the recent news in the blockchain industry, which is why the platform is open to further partnership with more crypto coins and merchants. 

We’re always willing to help the client with the technical side of the integration — for example, via the Telegram channels we make for clients. NOWPayments offers various kinds of platform integration so that you could choose the one best suited for your needs. Technical questions aside, we make a press release and pay a lot of attention to all kinds of promo to ensure you’re getting enough coverage. What is more, we always give recommendations to our relevant partners, thus establishing more connections between cryptocurrency projects and contributing to the development of the whole industry.

If you want your coin to be used as a mean of payment by the huge number of our existing and future clients, who are using our service, it is time to contact NOWPayments and become one of our partners. As we add your coin to the list of the cryptos we work with (which we do in case there’s demand from the merchants), it is important to start investing into marketing and make sure people know about your crypto. By working together we give your coin visibility and drastically enlarge your customer base. 

NOWPayments is always willing to engage in joint promotions and collabs. By doing a bunch of joint promos, you’re both serving as a leverage to the other partner and gaining customers and recognition from their client base, which is why it is a great, mutually beneficial idea for promoting yourself. Become our partner now, increase the profits from your crypto, work on your customer base and don’t hesitate to contact us if you need something or have any questions. You can reach us over email ([email protected]) or Telegram (@xenaNOW). 

What is BCD?

BCD (Bitcoin Diamond) is a blockchain that was created as the result of Bitcoin’s fork. The main goal of launching Bitcoin Diamond was to make improvements to the BCE protocol, reduce transaction fees, speed up confirmation time, and make an effort to solve Bitcoin’s mining centralization, scalability problems and a high threshold for new members. This will allow BCD to provide the best solutions for financial companies around the world.  The team behind Bitcoin Diamond’s wants to create a cryptocurrency that could be used as a convenient and secure currency for the underbanked peoples of the world. All these things make Bitcoin Diamond one of the most convenient currencies to pay online. NOWPayments is very excited to have it on board!

NOWPayments is an innovative gateway for crypto payments that supports most of the major currencies and constantly working on bringing in the new coins. Our API is designed to guarantee a quick deploy on your website or service and ensure instant funds withdrawal. 

Other NOWPayments advantages include:

• Instant auto conversion of funds.
• The widest among competitors arrange of coins 
• Transparent, simple and hassle-free API. 
• Convenient dashboard and store settings and reliable 24/7 support.
• Custody-free service with no hidden fees. 

Quickstart here!

With the wide variety of options to start accepting cryptocurrency payments as a merchant for your (online) store, you might wonder what the right option is. The ease to integrate the payment solution into your store is a big consideration; the other might be pricing. The moment you start accepting cryptocurrency payments, what happens with the funds after your customer made a purchase? Do you get the full-share or is there a fee to be paid, second question, who pays these fees, your customer or the store itself? To answer all these questions and come up with a solution, we’ll zoom in on NOWPayments and explain how we manage to remain free of any additional fees.

First Off, What Is NOWPayments Exactly?

Simply put? A way of accepting cryptocurrency payments. Nothing more than that. We have created an incredibly easy way of accepting cryptocurrencies in your (online) store with the help of NOWPayments. It allows you to accept a wide variety of cryptocurrencies that ranges further than just Bitcoin and Ethereum. The processing is handled by NOWPayments, besides that, the funds never end up in our wallets. We do not have access to any of the wallet the merchant has selected, nor will we ever be able to do so. This means we’re 100% non-custodial, making sure that what’s yours, is really yours. To top all of this off, we do not charge any fees for payment services. We believe in bringing the ease of using cryptocurrencies and accepting it as a form of payment should be possible to anyone. We do not want to charge anyone for supporting this cause, so we found a different solution to this. Let us explain how. 

What Happens After a Purchase Is Made?

Let’s assume you have decided to start accepting cryptocurrency payments, you installed NOWPayments on your online store and you have decided which currency you would like to accept. You are good to go. Your customer arrives at the check-out phase of your store and sees the possibility to pay using cryptocurrencies. They decided to use Litecoin as a form of payment, yet you only accept Bitcoin payments yourself. At this moment, our customer can simply finalize the payment using Litecoin, while the NOWPayments back-end does the rest of the work. With the help of the ChangeNOW instant crypto swaps, these Litecoins will be exchanged for Bitcoin on our partnered exchanges;

Binance

As one of the most dominant exchanges in the industry, Binance is also leading with trading volume and liquidity. With an incredible range of products offered on the exchange, all coins offered as a form of payment within the NOWPayments solution, are listed on the Binance exchange. Binance has a strong reputation of being trustworthy, efficient and in our case, have reliable and efficient APIs to connect with.

Bitfinex

Serving as one of the prominent top-tier exchanges out there, Bitfinex has been around for several years now. After successfully introducing their version of a stablecoin, Tether, also known as USDT, Bitfinex has definitely made a name for itself and their exchange. As one of the major exchanges, it also means that there’s a great variety of projects listed on this exchange, together with a good amount of liquidity and trading volume. Where Binance focused more on attracting masses of new users, Bitfinex remained solely accessible to traders with big portfolio’s for years, after opening up only recently to anyone. 

Huobi

One of the longest-lasting exchanges alongside Bitfinex is Huobi. It serves a great portion of the Asian markets with offices in all major cities in Asia. With being one of the biggest exchanges out there, comes great liquidity and volume. Huobi strives to serve its clients in the best way possible, which can be noticed from their great service surrounding their APIs and other services. 

With these three top-tier exchanges, NOWPayments has the possibility of handling each and every payment request at any moment. As we all know, the cryptocurrency market never closes, allowing purchases and transfers to occur momentarily. Whenever a purchase is made at the store of a merchant, the NOWPayments mechanism connects to one of these exchanges to transfer the currency that’s used to pay into the desired currency. In the case above, the Litecoin is exchanged for Bitcoin. NOWPayments has provided the following example explaining the mechanism;

“NOWPayments is a completely zero-fee service. However, other fees (such as network or exchange fees) might be applied.

Let’s say your customer would like to make a $20 purchase. They would like to pay you in ETH, while you’re accepting your funds into a BTC wallet. The ETH to USD rate is $171 per 1 ETH. Therefore, the customer would pay 0.11695906 ETH, while you would get 0.0031984 BTC with all the exchange and processing fees, as well as a network fee for the instant fund transfer to your wallet, already subtracted.” 

All the rates are as of 04/11/2019. The rates as of now may drastically differ.

So How Does NOWPayments Make Money?

Of course, the company behind NOWPayments has to generate any form of income in order to remain sustainable as a company, increase the current products and create new solutions to strive for decentralization all around. The way this happens is during this process of transferring one fund to the exchange in question and exchanging it for the other currency, NOWPayments takes a small piece of the pie during these trading spreads. This method allows the merchant to have minimal differences between the amount paid by the buyer in the store, and the actual amount the merchant receives in his/her wallet. The only fees that are extracted from the price paid during the purchase in the store are the network fees and exchange fees, the NOWPayments piece of the pie is paid by covering the trading spread in an efficient manner to cover our costs and stay away from additional fees. 

We hope that the system behind NOWPayments is a bit more clear now our reasoning behind not asking for any additional funds is clarified. We are always looking for ways to improve our current system, are always open for feedback and can’t wait to get in touch! Do not hesitate to reach out at [email protected], we are more than happy to speak to you!

What is Dash?

Dash is digital cash designed to offer financial freedom to everyone. Dash allows millions of individuals across the globe to carry out instantly re-spendable and secure transactions, with near-zero fees. Built to support real-life use cases, Dash is the leading decentralized payment solution: it is accepted at over 4,900 merchants globally, accessible via 700+ ATMs and 90+ exchanges worldwide. As in the case with many currencies, the main purpose of launching Dash was to improve existing solutions and solve problems that the previous currencies could not solve. Dash is decentralized, which means the absence of a central issuer and the equality of network participants.

Decentralization in DASH does not end with simple equality of the participants. Each member of the network can contribute development ideas or vote for other initiatives. The idea of ​​Decentralized Governance is fully realized. NOWPayments is fully supporting the idea behind the Dash creation and extremely excited to partner with a company of such amazing believes. 

NOWPayments is an innovative crypto payment gateway service that aims to solve the existing issues in the industry: lack of supported currencies, speed, big fees. 

Apart from that, NOWPayments have the following advantages:

• The instant auto conversion of your funds: no risk of losing funds to market price fluctuations!
• The widest among the competitors list of supported coins.
• An easy to deploy API with an in-depth manual.
• Custody-free service with no hidden fees
• Support agents are available 27/7

If you want to accept donations in the easiest way, NOWPayments can help you!

Getting donations in cryptocurrency is a perfect solution, because it’s:

•  safe: no centralized organizations can block your account; 
•  fast: it depends on the speed of creation of new blocks, but much faster than usual payments (for example, average Ethereum transaction time is between 15 seconds and 5 minutes);
•  convenient: the cost of the transaction depends on the speed of it; so you can choose the most appropriate way for you!

If you are interested in implementing our donation button check out this easy step-by-step tutorial: 

•  Sign up for a NowPayments account. You can do this via this link.
•  Specify the cryptocurrency and the crypto wallet.
•  Generate an API Key.
•  Replace it using the link (https://nowpayments.io/donation/?api_key=*your_api_key*).
• Place a link on your website or blog!

NOWPayments is the best choice to install the donation button, because:

•  it is easy: you can do it in 4 simple steps;
•  minimum info is needed: you login using only the e-mail address and the name of the company (which can be changed); 
•  it is convenient: we provide full technical support during the integration stage!

Hit us up at [email protected] if you have any questions, and follow us on social media: 

•  Twitter
•  Reddit
•  Facebook
•  Medium
•  Our blog

Are you convinced that our financial future will be more diversified than the current focus surrounding FIAT-Currencies? Have you dipped your toes into the cryptocurrency waters or are you all in convinced this technology will revolutionize the way we see finance these days? Then you should seriously be considering accepting payments for your webshop, platform or service with cryptocurrencies. As there are several solutions on how to integrate this into your store, there’s a ton of examples to take lessons from and learn. Today we’ll be focusing on NOWPayments, the non-custodial, zero-fee solution to accepting cryptocurrency payments. 

What is NOWPayments?

Simply put, it is a way of accepting cryptocurrency on your website. With an easy to integrate system the NOWPayments API allows you to start accepting cryptocurrency as a form of payment on your website. The integration works with an easy native integration or a neat widget that’s as easy to use as the Internet you’re using on a daily basis. That being said, let’s zoom in a little more to see the several services that distinguish NOWPayments from their competitors. 

Range of different Cryptocurrencies accepted

The most known currencies in the crypto-environment are Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin. These are the biggest ones, the most trusted and those that most people that own cryptocurrencies will be holding. Thus it’s smart to accept these currencies as part of your payment options in your online store. If you are more convinced that other currencies, the so-called ‘alts’, are more future-proof and you would rather start stacking up on a precious alt, then NOWPayments has got you covered. A total of 27 cryptocurrencies are offered as a  form of payment, ranging from the biggest currencies to smaller cap alts and even stablecoin. If you want to enjoy the ease of cryptocurrencies but you don’t want to risk your coin losing its value, then a stablecoin would be the solution. A full list of the accepted coins can be found here.

Auto Coin Conversion

As the merchant that’s convinced about the benefits of holding cryptocurrencies, you have the ability to pick your favorite. This would mean that you still allow your store to accept the several payment options in the 27 different currencies, yet in fact, you only accept one single one. Let’s say you’re a bitcoin maximalist and you only want to stack up on some satoshis, then the auto-coin conversion will be the right option for you. The moment a payment is made, the paid token will be transferred directly on a partner-exchange, ChangeNOW, into the desired currency. That could range from Bitcoin swapping for BNB, to GroestlCoin for Ripple. It’s all up to your preferences and wishes. 

Non-Custodial service

‘Not your keys, not your coins’ are words to live by in the cryptocurrency industry. Whether you have your coins stored on an exchange or a custodial party, if these people own your private keys, it means that eventually, they are the ones that own your currencies. That means that they could run off any minute with your beloved holdings. Doesn’t sound too good, does it? With the integrated non-custodial system that NOWPayments is using, the accepted payments are directly sent to a wallet that you own. The benefits here lay in the fact that we have never touched the coins that you accept, nor could we even if we wanted to. You own every single piece of the pie that gets accepted in your store, after the conversion rate or network fees. The fact that it’s a non-custodial system also means that it’s completely compliant with all legal parties across the globe. NOWPayments does not own anything, it’s simply a service that’s being offered as an addition to your already accepted payment services. We believe that your coins should be held behind your keys. Make sure you always live by these words and find a secure and easy way to store your keys so only you can access them. 

What does this service cost me?

The beauty of all this is that NowPayments is a zero-fee service. We do not charge anything for using our service. The only costs that would be present are the network costs for simply doing the transactions from one wallet to another. These costs are reliant on the load of the network and the state of the accepted coins. As the conversion to your desired currency is nearly instant, the fluctuation of the prices are neglectable and do not affect the amount you eventually end up receiving in your wallet.

How do I get started?

A payment solution should be as simple as it can be. Whenever your customer is at the point of doing the payment, nothing should stop him or her from actually making the purchase. As most customers are currently accustomed to performing a payment using a credit, or debit card, there’s nothing much to explain. Cryptocurrency payments can be a tiny bit more difficult. Although taking in the fact that a person is willing to pay in cryptocurrency, it would mean that the person has the knowledge of performing the purchase. Still, we focused on creating the most robust and easy to use system for both the merchant and the customer in order for these purchases to be as comfortable as possible. The customer simply picks the desired form of payment, receives a transaction address and is asked to perform the payment. This system is as easy as it gets on the customer side, so we tried to do the same for the merchant side of integration. 

Whenever you as a merchant, want to start accepting cryptocurrency payments, the NowPayments API, that’s ready to use, is accessible whenever you need it. For those not as experienced working with code, or not used to API’s in that manner, there’s the option to perform the implementation with the help of a ready to use plug-in connected to WooCommerce and WHMCS that’s coming soon. We created a donation button and widget that are a few mouse clicks away of ending up on your website, to create the most comfortable experience for both parties. 

Ready to start accepting cryptocurrency? Reach out to us today!

What is Ontology?

Ontology provides development tools and supports multiple programming languages for decentralised application development. Ontology’s blockchain framework supports public blockchain systems and is able to customise public blockchains for applications. Ontology also supports collaboration among chain networks with protocol groups. 

With high-performance features like VBFT and sharding, Ontology is ready to power applications for millions of blockchain users in the world. ONT is a native token to a project that can be used by business organisations willing to incorporate blockchain technology into their work.

ONT is an extremely convenient coin to receive payments in. Its algorithms, speed and adoption played the major part in our decision to support the coin as soon as possible. NOWPayments is excited to greet ONT among the coins that we support for merchant wallets! 

NowPayments is a gateway for crypto payments that supports all of the major currencies. Every week we integrate new currencies, i.e. new options to implement crypto on your service. Our API is designed to guarantee a quick deploy on your website or service and ensure instant funds withdrawal. 

Other NOWPayments advantages include:

• Instant auto conversion of funds.
• The widest among competitors range of coins — with the support of ChangeNOW.
• Transparent and hassle-free API. 
• Convenient dashboard and store settings. 
• Custody-free service with no hidden fees. 
• Reliable 24/7 support. 
• Quickstart on this page!

What is the first thing you need to think about once you’ve made up your mind, decided to join the blockchain scene and to trade some of your savings for cryptocurrency? You have to figure out where you’re going to store your crypto funds. It’s been ten years since Bitcoin, the first crypto was launched, and hundreds of virtual wallet cryptocurrency services have appeared over this time. 

These wallets, or crypto payment gateways, can be divided into two large groups: custodial and non-custodial. Custodial wallets are closer to what newer blockchain users can be used to — internet banking. Just like your bank can take care of the problem in case you forget your password or mess up the bank details while doing a money transfer, a custodial wallet service can back you up in some similar situations — help you restore access to your money or getting your crypto payment unstuck in the blockchain.

The catch? You don’t have access to your own private keys. The custodial wallet service stores them on their servers — basically, this is the very situation where a third party can access your information. Your funds can get frozen due to KYC or AML requirements. In the worst case, such services can get hacked, and if they do, your money can get stolen.

Non-custodial wallets are, on the other hand, exactly what first comes to mind when you think about blockchain: in the decentralised system, you are the only one who can access your crypto funds. Upon getting yourself a non-custodial wallet, you’re provided with encrypted keys that are stored on your device. Normally, this is considered to be the safest way to store your cryptocurrency. In this article we’ll be talking about non-custodial crypto wallets’ advantages and disadvantages for regular cryptocurrency users and business owners, and about the best ways to use them.

Non-custodial wallets can, in turn, be divided into two smaller groups: software wallets and hardware wallets. The former are, as the name suggests, different software that can run on devices you already own: they can be websites, PC programs, smartphone apps. Out of all crypto wallets, they are the most accessible and the easiest to use. You are going to need an internet connection for them to work. Hardware wallets, on the other hand, are the devices themselves, such as USB flash drives, on which you can store your funds offline. 

Like we mentioned above, the best thing about working with custody-free services is the lack of risk that your data can get compromised or your money get stolen. You are the only person to have 100% control over your (or your company’s) funds. There are, however, many other, less obvious pros of going custody-free. You don’t have to pay any fee to the custodian, which already sounds nice enough. If you have your own business, you can swap coins and carry out transactions and crypto payments easier, without having to worry that your custodian won’t approve the transaction or will freeze your funds altogether for whatever reason.

What is more, software and hardware non-custodial wallets have their own respective advantages. The former are incredibly easy to use, don’t cost anything to download, and most of them have detailed user guides. The latter are the most secure of all wallets: since they are actual physical objects, it would be quite difficult for hackers to access them. If you’re a hardware wallet user, you need to go online only when you have to swap coins or pay in cryptos, which means your wallet is rarely online and increases your security even more.

While this all sounds appealing, it is necessary to mention that going custody-free has its disadvantages, too. Whether you’re naturally an absent-minded or forgetful person, or just don’t fully trust yourself, the idea of being the only one to be able to access your crypto funds might scare you off. Worry not: there are multiple ways to protect yourself from losing your money.

How do non-custodial crypto payment gateways work? As your crypto funds are securely stored in the wallet, you get private keys that are encrypted and stored on your device. What happens if your mobile phone or laptop gets broken or stolen? There is a way to restore your access to your funds: upon creating a wallet, the application generates a secret word combination consisting of twelve (sometimes it’s twenty-four) random words. This is your mnemonic seed you need to use to restore access to your money.

There are certain rules that apply to using the mnemonic seed. Under no circumstances should you tell it to anyone, store it on a device or even just type it on websites. If you are worried you aren’t able to memorise your seed (which is a valid reason to worry: not everyone can memorise twenty-four random words), write it down on a piece of paper (make at least two copies) and store it securely. Better safe than sorry! This way you won’t lose access to your funds even in case of an emergency.

As well as pros, software and hardware wallets have their respective cons, too. Even though software wallets provide a significantly higher level of security than custodial wallets, the user can still suffer from fraud: many popular smartphone apps have fake copies on app stores, which are strongly not recommended to use. It is a good idea to look up the apps on the official sites of crypto wallets, which normally have links to AppStore and GooglePlay. As for hardware wallets, you need to be careful so they don’t get infected with malware. Moreover, you will probably want to make sure you are buying a brand new device nobody has tampered with: otherwise, the money you store it isn’t safe, and neither are your crypto payments.

At the end of the day, even though using non-custodial wallets has its disadvantages, they can be successfully dealt with. Read up on possible problem solutions, make sure you don’t lose your mnemonic seed, don’t post it online or download suspicious wallets — and you’re good to go. We wish you nothing but good luck in your further blockchain journey.