As a travel bug myself, I wanted to shed some light on a platform that has been accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment for flights and hotels since 2013.

They’ve been working on accepting Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and Dash as well.
For the past 5 years CheapAir.com has been using Coinbase as their processing partner for exchanging the Bitcoin for fiat currency in order to facilitate the transactions with their travel supplier partners.

Unfortunately, now Coinbase has decided to discontinue offering custodial services for merchants. This change will take place in the coming weeks so now CheapAir.com is faced with finding a new solution. They’re seriously considering using BitPay as their new processor but there is one issue and they’ve chosen to address it to their customers.
The thing with BitPay is that it requires a specific type of wallet, BIP-70 compliant wallets to be exact.
It really seems like CheapAir cares about its Bitcoin paying customers and wants to be sure that they aren’t making moves that will ultimately discourage users from paying with cryptocurrency.

I wanted to bring this up to you all today because I think it’s important to get the word out about companies who are open to accepting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a form of payment, especially ones that value these customers and are interested in their feedback when it comes to making changes to how their payments will work in the future.

VIEW VIDEO HERE^^^^

On to the next crypto-centric platform for today, this one is like Twitter, except its on the Ethereum blockchain.

It’s called Peepeth.

You can probably expect to see much more crypto and blockchain focused posts and overall higher quality posts in general since people will be needing to pay to post.
Because it is a platform built on the Ethereum Blockchain, each post is like a transaction, so you’ll actually have to pay some gas to post. This can actually work to filter out spammy posts and it also opens the door for people being able to tip others and be tipped in Ethereum for their efforts.

For those of you struggling to monetize your works, this could be another option for you to gain a small stream of income.

If you want to explore this one I’ve provided links down below so you can checkout Peepeth.
You’ll need to be logged into a MetaMask account if you want to participate in this platform and if you want to post, you’ll need to have some Ethereum in your MetaMask wallet.

Lastly we’ve got a platform called Gem.

Of course, much like all very promising platforms in this space, Gem’s has yet to be released. But if it’s anything like what they’re describing, it could be a useful tool for a lot of people.

What they’re focused on creating is a platform that will provide its users with:

• The ability to manage their portfolio
• Store and trade their cryptocurrencies on their wallet
• A discovery tool so they can get exposed to and learn more about a lot of other coins and projects, pepper in some social media tools and this one could be a cool one to check out.
  The Gem company is full of crypto investors and they’ve also used surveys of other crypto investors and those who are new to this space to help determine what would make this new platform the most beneficial.

It’s great that this company is creating a convenient platform, but we always need to keep in mind that the thing that is always sacrificed most with convenience is security.

The beta release for their portfolio manager will be in May and the wallet will be available sometime this summer. If you’re interested in checking this one out, you can join their beta waitlist by visiting their website. Again, links to all of this information can be found down below.

Additional Reading/Sources:

CheapAir accepts Bitcoin, Coinbase bows out
Bitpay
Peepeth
Gem