Litecoin (LTCUSD)

[Ramiel]

Here’s an Abra update for you:

03/28/2018 Abra Update
u/RyanfromAbra
Hey guys,

I do not want to make a habit of making an announcement for announcements or anything like that. However, I do want to provide an update since we’ve been getting a lot of the same questions. One thing to note: we do not have transaction fees or any other kind of fees (except btc withdrawal mining fee), but we do have a spread of around 1% for currency exchanges. For more info: Abra.com/fees

We are starting to test synthetic currencies based on the Litecoin network in production beginning next week. There are a lot of factors between starting and using LTC on the backend almost exclusively, so it will be gradual. At the same time, we’ll be adding the remaining 7 cryptocurrencies to bring our total count to 20 cryptocurrencies. All of these except for Bitcoin will be synthetic, so you will not be able to deposit or withdraw them. We want to be explicitly clear here regarding that. Also, if I was unclear in my previous posts regarding the transition to LTC network on the backend, my apologies. It will be a gradual rollout.

Native LTC deposit and withdrawals are poised for late April 2018.

With respect to another common question of : Will Abra actually hold any LTC to back its smart contracts? Our answer is : Abra maintains appropriate controls and sufficient liquidity to facilitate on-going settlement of our users’ smart contract hedges.

The following only applies for users using a US bank account or AMEX card. We do have security protocols which will inevitably anger some. We do have KYC as well as all of the other required regulatory processes. We also have our in-house security protocols that will restrict users. Some are hard reject (permanent) and some are temporary upon submission of additional documents. We are unable to disclose the reasons for restricting users for security reasons. Basically, we do not want to help fraudulent activity learn our processes and “game” us. We understand good actors will be restricted, sometimes permanently, and we will be continually improving our protocols to drive false negatives down and build increasingly stringent protocols. Our banking partner also has their own security protocols as well, some of which we are unable to supersede. We are working on productizing it, as we know an email request with a link for uploading will make people question our policies or doubt the security of submitted information. The information uploaded is encrypted and stored securely. You are always welcome to verify that it is us before submission. We do not share or sell your information and we take user information and security seriously.

Abra was founded in the Silicon Valley and we have always stayed in the area. We do have a base in the Philippines, but we are not based out of the Philippines. I’m actually not sure where people are seeing that we are headquartered or operate solely out of the Philippines.

We still do not want to talk about “what happens to the LTC price” or any discussion of price. We will not be speculating on what will happen to the price of Litecoin or any of the other coins due to using the Litecoin network on the back end. Also, my disclaimer: I do customer operations, so I am unable to answer technical questions or hedging questions. Regarding hedging, it’s not my place to discuss it. There are several reasons for this, the way we do it is proprietary, I do not work alongside the hedging team, and I do not understand it to make public statements on it (as well as others).

We rolled out support via Telegram and Twitter. Twitter: https://twitter.com/Abra_Support Telegram: https://t.me/abra_support_bot

As always, I’m available for questions, comments, concerns, etc.

Thank you for taking the time to read!

-Ryan from Abra