Breaking: Revolut announces Bitcoin withdrawals in hastily deleted blog post

One of the frustrations with investing in Bitcoin through Revolut has long been its insistence that holdings remain tied to your account, meaning you can only buy and sell via Revolut’s app.

Not for much longer.

In a post to its blog at 10am this morning, which was quickly deleted here, but not before AltFi saw it, Revolut announced that Metal paid customers will get beta access to transfer their Bitcoin holdings out of Revolut.

A Revolut spokesperson told AltFi that the blog post was published early by mistake, and that the launch is planned for next Thursday.

Other cryptocurrency withdrawals are also coming soon, according to the now-deleted blog post, “we’re starting with Bitcoin, but we’ll be adding more tokens and upgrades in the near future.”

Revolut described the withdrawal process as “easy as 1, 2, 3” with customers being able to add a wallet address, enter the amount and hit withdraw.

Here's a GIF from the now-deleted Revolut blog post.

There is also two-factor authentication required when adding an address in order to boost security.

Some limits will apply during the beta period, beyond its restriction to Metal paying customers. Only three external addresses can be added, and withdrawals are limited at £1,000/month or £500/day, with limits being reviewed in the future.

Obviously, Revolut would prefer customers keep their crypto with the fintech, and it pledges that the “majority of our crypto funds are held in cold storage with some of the best custodians in the crypto game.”

However, the limitation of not being able to store your holdings anywhere apart from Revolut has long deterred traders, as it seemingly goes against the decentralised, open principles which underline crypto.

It has also stopped traders from using crypto bought via Revolut as a medium of exchange, given they haven’t been able to send or transfer Bitcoin to other customers.

In total, Revolut offers over 20 different crypto tokens which can be bought and sold (and possibly soon traded) through its app, including Ethereum, Litecoin, XRP and Uniswap.

According to AltFi's calculations earlier this year, Revolut could be sitting on over £1bn worth of crypto on behalf of its customers.