How Luno evolved through 2020

It’s been a huge year for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Here at Luno, we worked hard in 2020 to give you all you need to use it to its full potential. This was often thanks to your amazing feedback ideas, which have enabled us to find new ways to improve our platform and give you what you need.

Here’s just a few of the features we added this year. We have even bigger plans for 2021, so let us know what you want to see added on Twitter.

Bitcoin Savings Wallet

In mid-October, we unveiled the Luno Bitcoin Savings Wallet enabling our customers to earn up to 1.5% interest on their bitcoin holdings per annum.

The need for a bitcoin savings account has been brought into sharp focus over the past year, in large part due to the economic uncertainty created by COVID-19. Countries across the world have slashed interest rates, with some even introducing negative rates. This means savers are currently facing a dearth of options.

The Savings Wallet arrived at a time when traditional investments have shown vulnerability at a time of crisis. There has never been a better time to utilise a currency that doesn’t rely on a healthy economy to determine its value. Give it a try for yourself.

Please note that currently, the Bitcoin Savings Wallet is not available in the UK and Malaysia. We are working hard on this and will keep you informed about any further developments.

XRP and LTC joined the Lunoverse

We welcomed two new coins to our stable this year: Ripple’s XRP and Litecoin.

XRP is the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap. It’s the native cryptocurrency of the XRP Ledger. XRP is a digital asset built for global payments. It facilitates cross-border payments by acting as a bridge between different currencies. XRP is best known for being the cryptocurrency used in Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) payment service. Find out how to set up your XRP Wallet.

Litecoin was one of the first cryptocurrencies to launch after Bitcoin. It was created by Charlie Lee in October 2011. Lee has referred to Litecoin as the ‘silver’ to Bitcoin’s ‘gold’. It’s a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that forked from the Bitcoin Core client and uses much of the same code as Bitcoin. The main difference is that it processes blocks every 2.5 minutes instead of Bitcoin’s 10 minutes. It does this by using a different mining algorithm to validate transactions. This means a faster transaction confirmation time and, in turn, lower transaction fees. The supply limit is also different from Bitcoin; Litecoin has an 84 million coin supply limit while Bitcoin has a 21 million coin limit. Find out how to set up your Litecoin Wallet.

Easier purchases with Repeat Buy

Do you spend hours trying to time the market? Take some of the stress out of your life by using our new repeat buy function, which allows you to set up a schedule where crypto is automatically purchased at regular intervals.

Repeat buy is an easy way to employ the dollar-cost averaging technique – a variation on hodling that mitigates against some of the risks and removes the stress of watching and waiting.

The goal of dollar-cost averaging is to make regular investments of the same amount at repeated intervals, irrespective of the day-to-day price of your favourite crypto. The thinking is that by investing small amounts in regular instalments over a longer period of time, this will hedge against major price movements up or down and help you to avoid mistiming the market.

Timing the market with 100% accuracy all the time is impossible. Dollar-cost averaging reduces your losses when the market drops, and when it goes up again, maximise your returns. It has the added advantage of removing some of the biases from your decision-making. Once you set up dollar-cost averaging, the strategy will make the decisions for you.

To set up a repeat buy, simply go to the Luno App and when you buy crypto, you’ll be asked whether you want to set it up. That’s it.

Express withdrawals in South Africa

Tired of waiting for your withdrawals? We recently got rid of our standard withdrawal fees and set up Express Withdrawals for our South African customers. Express Withdrawals allow customers to pay R20 to ensure their transactions are processed via Real Time Clearing (RTC) with the bank.

Reduced Exchange fees

Withdrawal fees weren’t the only fees we said goodbye to in 2020. In October, we reduced our taker fees for Exchange customers. Now, the highest fees that any customer would pay will be 0.10%, while the lowest will be 0.03%. This is a huge reduction – down from a top rate of 0.25. We also introduced an updated tiering structure for taker fees, while makers continue to pay zero fees across the board.

Stop-limit orders arrived

We added stop-limit orders to our Exchange and mobile app. A stop-limit order is similar to a limit order – a type of order where you buy or sell an asset at a given price or better. In the case of stop-limit orders, they only become active in the order book once the stop price has been triggered.

This is an important feature for crypto traders as it helps greatly in mitigating against some of the risks associated with price volatility. It’s a feature we know our community will be excited about and we’ve worked hard to bring it to you. Haven’t used it yet? Find out more about the benefits and how it works.

Added trading insights with ITB

Get deeper insights on Luno thanks to our new partnership with IntoTheBlock, an intelligence company that leverages machine learning and advanced statistics to extract crypto market signals. These new insights have provided our traders with even more dynamic, in-depth trading signals and data visualisation tools. Check them out here.

A sleeker experience

As part of our ongoing efforts to ensure our customers have the best user experience, our designers worked hard to give some of our pages a well-deserved facelift. As we’ve expanded our product offerings, more recently with our BTC Savings Wallet, we wanted to make it even easier for customers to browse all of our features in one place.

Our Exchange page also got some love as we wanted to make it easier and quicker for our customers to see a snapshot overview of their local markets without having to visit the web Exchange itself.

What new features and coins do you want us to add? Don’t forget to let us know on Twitter!