FinTech startup Circle Internet Financial, which is backed by venture capital from investment bank Goldman Sachs, announced on Monday that it had added support for privacy-focused cryptocurrrency Monero (XMR) to its zero-commission cryptocurrency investment app “Circle Invest”.
Boston-based Circle, which was founded in October 2013, until relatively recently, was best known for its mobile peer-to-peer payment app “Circle Pay”. Then, on March 2013, it announced that it was launching another mobile app, called “Circle Invest”, for zero-commission trading of cryptocurrencies. The app, which is only available to customers in United States (initially, all states except NY, MN, HI, and WY), started its life with support for five cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Ethereum Classic (ETC).
Then, on 30 April 2018, Circle, which is only one of four companies in the world to have a BitLicense (required for any company wishing to engage in crypto-related business activity affecting residents of New York state), said it was now also available to customers in the state of New York, and it they had added support for trading another cryptocurrency: Zcash (ZEC).
And now, they have added support for Monero (XMR). Here is how senior product manager, Rachel Mayer, announced the news on Circle’s official blog:
Last week, we welcomed Zcash to the coin family on Circle Invest. Today, we continue to grow our coin collection by supporting Monero as our new listed crypto asset. This brings our investable crypto assets to a total of 7 coins, making Circle Invest one of the only platforms you can invest instantly and seamlessly in the widest breadth of coins by using your bank account.
The way that Circle is able to make money from its customers’ crypto trading activities is through a 1.5% – 2% buy-sell spread:
While Circle Invest does not charge commissions per trade or any trading fees, the buy price and the sell price you are quoted on Circle Invest are different (often referred to as the spread). Generally, you can expect to see on average a 1.5%-2.0% difference between the two prices, sometimes lower and sometimes higher depending on market conditions.
Earlier this year, on 26 February 2018, Circle announced that it had acquired US-based digital asset exchange Poloniex, which was the first exchange to achieve $1 billion in daily volume.
At press time, according to data from CryptoCompare, Monero is trading at $230.40.
