Crypto

Freedom in the Form of Internet Money

Open, Borderless, Neutral, Censorship Resistant and Public. These are the 5 pillars of blockchain technology that underpin Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and thousand of other cryptocurrencies. It’s likely that if you clicked the link and are reading this, you already know. However, if you’re new to this technology, welcome. Crypto allows us to take responsibility of our money again. It’s trustless, cheaper, faster and safer once you get educated. We believe in this movement and as such we’re doing our small part in growing and educating the community. For more information, check out The Portal’s Bitcoin doorway.

Payment Addresses

Bitcoin (Native SegWit)

Bitcoin (P2SH)

Ethereum

Others

bc1qqxr7vux3vq7c8cyxqre8w530lf7uz72gf3uzpw

3NDauWFQJpEnsqgWNYg8PmEmeowBy562yD

0xAcF24a55Ce0278f27e41473dE1266b9ABbD300c0

Always double check the address. Do not manually enter addresses, copy and paste them directly or scan the QR code and then review the characters. The numbers and letters must match exactly for Bitcoin and Litecoin, including upper and lower case. The same is true for Ethereum except they are not strictly case sensitive. Transactions are irreversible and cannot be cancelled. Funds sent to the wrong address will be lost forever. Great power demands great responsibility, so practice due diligence.

Due to current price volatility of crypto with relation to traditional currencies, we are putting faith in our customers to send honest amounts. Please check conversion rates with respect to the Canadian Dollar when making a payment. We suggest taking a screenshot of the conversion rate at the time of payment. Include information pertaining to the date and time as well as the exchange used to source pricing data. To protect your privacy, we suggest reading this short guide.

SegWit (Segregated Witness) is a method to efficiently use limited block space by separating the unlocking signatures from the rest of the block data. This increases the number of transactions that can fit into a single block and thus reduces transaction fees by 38%. Native SegWit addresses start with bc1. Some wallets and exchanges do not support native SegWit yet. They might issue a warning or even restrict sending to a native SegWit address and won’t generate native SegWit receive addresses since their software might not decode the bc1 address format as a valid Bitcoin format. However, this format is fully backwards compatible and funds can be sent between all address formats if using the right software.

For full compatibility or if you’re not sure, use the P2SH (Pay to Script Hash) address. These addresses start with a 3. P2SH allows one to secretly encode a set of spending conditions into their address. The conditions are only revealed when spending from the address. However, receiving funds is simple since anyone can send funds to a P2SH address. A clever workaround includes wrapping the address with SegWit conditions. This means it will function like a SegWit address only when sending after the script is decoded. This saves a bit of space and lowers fees by 26%. It’s not a full savings since some extra data is needed to include the script in the transaction, but overall it’s still efficient.

Lastly, legacy addresses that start with a 1. Nobody uses these anymore since basically all modern Bitcoin wallets and services are P2SH compatible. If you have old untouched funds on a legacy address, you’ve probably been in this space long enough that we don’t need to explain anything. For anyone who’s reading this out of curiosity, here is a nice place to learn about this ancient format.