The Daily: Cointext Offers Philippines BCH Wallet, Beam Launches Mimblewimble Coin

Cointext’s SMS bitcoin cash wallet is now available in the Philippines and we’ve got the details below. Also in The Daily on Friday, the first Mimblewimble coin has been launched by Beam and crypto exchange Binance reintroduces its platform for token sales, Launchpad, which will host the Bittorrent token generation event.

Also read: New York Establishes Crypto Task Force, Novogratz Buys More of Galaxy Digital

Cointext Services Now Available to Filipinos

Cointext, a platform that enables users to transfer cryptocurrency offline using simple text messages, has launched its service in another new market. The SMS bitcoin cash (BCH) wallet is now available in the Philippines, a country with a population of over 100 million people and a large diaspora around the world.

The Cointext wallet allows anyone with even a basic mobile device that supports text messages to send electronic cash to other phone numbers or BCH addresses. What’s more, to receive the money, the recipients don’t even need to download a wallet, install an application, set up an account or have access to the internet.

These features are behind Cointext’s growing popularity in countries where modern smartphones are available to a small portion of the population and the majority of telecom subscribers still use traditional mobile phones. Cointext also appeals to residents of countries that receive a lot of remittances from abroad, from Brazil to Romania.

“The ability to send value over SMS is tailormade for the Philippines,” said Cointext founder and CTO Vin Armani, as quoted by Prweb. “Remittances are a big part of the economy and Filipinos are already big adopters of cryptocurrency, especially bitcoin cash.”

Armani added that the country has many cryptocurrency exchanges and that “makes using cryptocurrency for remittances a no-brainer” as it allows easy conversion to local fiat, the Philippine peso. With Cointext, Filipinos will also be able to make cross border transfers at much lower costs, in comparison with traditional services.

With the addition of the Philippines, the number of markets where Cointext is currently available grows to a total of 39. New users in the country can get a Cointext wallet by texting START or SIMULAN to the access number 639221101037.

Mimblewimble Coin Beam Launched

On the 10th anniversary of Bitcoin’s genesis block, a new privacy-oriented coin based on its blockchain was launched. Beam, which is issued by an Israeli startup, uses Mimblewimble, a protocol that was originally developed in 2016 with the aim of both improving the scalability of the Bitcoin network and increasing the privacy of its users. Its developers eventually concluded they needed to create a separate Mimblewimble cryptocurrency.

Another project called Grin was the first to start work on a crypto utilizing the protocol. However, Beam became the first to attract venture capital financing to issue a Mimblewimble coin. Grin is now scheduled to launch in mid-January, as news.Bitcoin.com reported last month.

According to an announcement on Medium, Beam’s mainnet release contains the following components for Linux, Mac, and Windows devices: desktop wallet app that includes a CPU miner node, CLI wallet and Beam node. A standalone Opencl miner and a standalone Cuda miner are available for Linux and Windows-based systems.

Binance Launchpad to Host Bittorrent Token Sale

Binance, currently the largest cryptocurrency exchange by daily trading volume, is reinstating Launchpad, its platform dedicated to token sales. Launchpad was initially introduced in August of 2017 with the Bread and Gifto sales. The exchange has just announced that Binance Launchpad will be featuring new projects in 2019.

According to the release, Launchpad will start with two projects: Bittorrent and Fetch.ai. “Further announcements for each upcoming project launch will be made in the coming weeks,” the exchange added.

Verified Binance users will be able to buy the tokens using bitcoin core (BTC), ethereum (ETH) and binance coin (BNB). Residents of the U.S., China and South Korea won’t be able to participate due to regulatory restrictions.

Bittorrent recently announced its new digital coin which will be offered through a token sale conducted on Binance Launchpad. The Bittorrent token (BTT) will be based on the protocol developed by Tron, which acquired Bittorrent last summer.

What are your thoughts on today’s news tidbits? Tell us in the comments section.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Smartmockups, Beam.

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