Author: Zen, PANews
The small fox wallet (MetaMask) with 30 million monthly active users now supports users to directly sell cryptocurrencies for fiat currency to bank cards.
On the evening of September 5th, the cryptocurrency wallet MetaMask announced the launch of its latest feature "Sell," which allows users to exchange cryptocurrencies for fiat currencies (such as USD, EUR, GBP) through the MetaMask Portfolio and send the funds to a bank account. This feature is currently only available in the United States, the United Kingdom, and some parts of Europe. Initially, it only supports ETH on the Ethereum mainnet and plans to expand to native gas tokens on Layer2 networks in the near future.
The "Sell" feature was launched about five months after MetaMask allowed users to purchase cryptocurrencies using fiat currencies from bank accounts, PayPal, debit cards, and credit cards.
According to the official introduction, when users use this feature for the first time, they must select their region. Subsequent uses will skip this step and default to the previously selected region. Users then input the quantity of ETH or other cryptocurrencies to be sold, choose a quote from multiple service providers, and connect their bank account. MetaMask has partnered with cryptocurrency gateway providers such as MoonPay, Sardine, and Transak. However, currently, the "Sell" feature is only provided by MoonPay and Transak. New users may need to complete KYC verification on the service provider's website before using these services.
Due to regional policy restrictions, users in Asia are temporarily unable to use this feature. We can understand the details of this withdrawal service based on the test conducted by Twitter user @S4mmyEth.
The UK user @S4mmyEth initiated a withdrawal request of 0.05 ETH through the "Sell" service and chose MoonPay as the service provider. After the on-chain transaction was completed, the related fees were transferred to MoonPay. During this process, a gas fee of approximately $0.80 and a 1% on-chain exchange fee were generated from the 0.05 ETH, which was valued at about $82.78 at the time. The entire process from submitting the request to receiving the fiat currency took 5 minutes.
After completing all the operations, @S4mmyEth finally received £59.42. When he initiated the withdrawal, the instant price of 0.05 ETH was approximately £65, so he needed to pay nearly £6 in fees to convert it into fiat currency, with a total fee rate of about 9%. This includes an ETH gas fee of £0.65 ($0.80), an exchange transaction fee of 1% (£0.65), and approximately £4.50 in hidden fees, which may have been charged by MoonPay.
This also means that the total cost of various fees from selling tokens on MetaMask to a bank card amounts to as high as 9%, which is significantly higher than expected.
Traditional financial institutions have significantly reduced their friendliness towards the cryptocurrency market since the FTX incident in November last year, and the exchange channels between the cryptocurrency market and fiat currency have narrowed further after the cryptocurrency-friendly bank incidents this year. MetaMask is making efforts to reopen this channel. Although users need to bear friction costs when cooperating with other intermediaries, it simplifies the operation process and is more conducive to attracting more users from outside the cryptocurrency circle.
In December last year, MetaMask reached a partnership with PayPal, allowing some US users to purchase Ethereum through PayPal. This partnership was later expanded to all US users (except in Hawaii) in May this year, making it the first Web3 wallet to facilitate such transactions through PayPal. In addition to directly purchasing ETH, this integration also supports transferring ETH from PayPal to MetaMask to help more users self-custody ETH.
In April, MetaMask launched the "Buy" service, allowing users from over 189 countries to purchase over 90 types of tokens on more than 8 blockchains. The "Buy" service supports a wider range of payment methods, including debit card and credit card transfers, PayPal transfers, bank transfers, instant ACH transfers, and other transfer methods.
In addition to fiat currency channels, perhaps sensing the intense competition in the wallet industry, MetaMask has changed its previous laid-back attitude and has been continuously updating its products over the past year.
For example, it introduced staking services, allowing users to directly stake tokens such as ETH to earn rewards. It has integrated cross-chain bridge providers, including bridge aggregators and standalone bridges. Notably, it has introduced "MetaMask Snap," a system that securely extends the functionality of MetaMask, similar to the Apple App Store for cryptocurrency wallets, allowing third-party developers to launch new decentralized applications to expand the functionality of MetaMask and create a permissionless ecosystem.
As one of the most widely used applications in the cryptocurrency market, MetaMask's every move is closely watched by the market. Compared to other wallets that continuously focus on product and user experience, the journey of the small fox in dominating the market may have just begun.
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