Recently Abra announced support for 20 cryptocurrencies and 50 fiat currencies in it’s new mobile app version. The app will offer real-time exchange accross all 70 currencies. Only 13 cryptocurrencies were included in the first release: Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, XRP, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum Classic, Dash, Zcash, Dogecoin, Golem, OmiseGO, Qtum, and Vertcoin. The rest will follow in the coming days: Stellar Lumens, Bitcoin Gold, DigiByte, Augur, Status, Stratis, and 0x.

They plan to offer competition for the recently launched Circle Invest and Robin Hood hood apps, but with a twist, since they also offer FIAT trading. The application’s wallet can be funded via bitcoin, bank wires, ACH and American Express cards in the US. Litecoin and Ethereum deposits will follow in the coming weeks. There will be no exchange or trading fees, Abra will make money through the spreads similarly on how Circle Invest and Robin Hood works.

Abra will be unique in the sense that it has developed a multi-sig smart contract-based platform that will use stablecoins based on Bitcoin and Litecoin. A well-known stablecoin currently is USDT (Tether), that is pegged on a 1:1 basis to the USD and is used by several exchanges who can’t currently offer fiat deposits and withdrawals. The stablecoins will represent the FIAT pairings on their app, they previously worked with this technology on the different Abra platforms.

They explained the use of the technology on their blog:

“These multi-sig contracts based on P2SH scripts on the Litecoin and Bitcoin blockchains simulate investment contracts the way a gold ETF is a contract based on USD. In the case of a gold contract, if the value of gold goes up, the user gets more USD, and if the value of gold goes down, the user loses USD. Abra is doing the same thing but using Litecoin and Bitcoin instead of USD with Abra acting as the counterparty (i.e. the other signatory) to the P2SH scripts. Abra now runs a market making operation that hedges away our counterparty risk on these scripts. We’ve been running this operation to manage fiat, Bitcoin and ether counterparty risk for over a year now with no service interruptions. We’ve extended this market making capability to include the altcoins launched today.”

After the recent announcements Abra’s CEO, Bill Barhydt, has been invited for an interview on Fox Business. He talked about their new application, their investors, target groups and also about the crypto market. It’s worth a watch: