![1-Year-Anniversary-Blog-Post.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmTMzb2k6wTNYdkDX67ZSwMFKCQqo8nngecAtBJggSjMc4/1-Year-Anniversary-Blog-Post.jpg) Metal Community, We’ve reached an important milestone for our team – the one year anniversary of Metal Pay. To commemorate this momentous occasion, we’d like to take a trip down memory lane and see how Metal Pay has evolved over the past 365 days, before looking ahead to our goals for the next 366. (That’s right, 2020 is a leap year!) ### Humble Beginnings old-office-photo

Metal didn’t get to where we are overnight. Our early life was spent in a tiny office, with mock-ups of prototypes taped to the wall and not much room to stretch out. Our original logo had a lowercase ‘m’ – that used to be the cool thing to do once upon a time. But we knew we were destined for greater things, and we made the decision to start our logo with a capital letter. MetalPay_2018_2019

Though our aesthetics have changed over time, our mission was clear from Day One: to reinvent banking and bring opportunities for financial independence to the masses. We’ve been laser-focused on this goal and we’ve seen tremendous success already. ### Modern Marketplace Traditional_Marketplace

For thousands of years, a marketplace was where people went to buy and sell goods, barter and trade products, and learn news and information. Marketplaces allowed people to take control of their own financial destiny – something we believe to be a fundamental human right. Our vision for Metal Pay was to function as a new type of marketplace, where people could buy and sell cryptocurrencies, trade and send crypto with friends, and learn new and exciting concepts. When we launched last September, Metal Pay only provided the option for users to earn crypto in the form of Metal (MTL) as a reward for making payments to friends. In December of 2018, that all changed with the addition of the Marketplace section, the first step in fulfilling our vision for a modern marketplace. Metal_Marketplace

The launch of our Marketplace immediately gave our users the ability to buy and sell 15 additional cryptocurrencies. We always said that was the beginning, and we’ve kept our promise. In 2019, we grew our Marketplace by one third, adding 5 additional currencies. We’ve streamlined the process of adding new cryptos, so expect to see many more in the year ahead. Here’s a complete list of cryptocurrencies currently available in the Marketplace: Marketplace Tokens

### Explosive Growth new_office

We knew we were on to something by hearing the reactions from our community. Users were referring their friends (and getting nice bonuses, too), people from around the world were itching to join in, and the calls for an Android version became practically deafening. We’ve always seen our users as part of a family, and now our family was growing at an unprecedented rate. To keep up with this growth, we moved into a new office and expanded our team, with the sole focus on improving the experience for our community and making their lives better. With over 130,000 registered users in just under a year, it’s hard to imagine how things could’ve gone any better. ### Giving Back social_likes

The response from our users has been overwhelming; people began making friends by interacting on our social media pages and message groups, other cryptocurrency projects were reaching out to join the fun, and the demand for Metal Pay was growing every day. We knew we owed all of this to our users, and we wanted to find some way to give back to the people who made this all possible. With the launch of the Philanthropic Arm of the Metal Foundation, we found ways to directly benefit our community and make their lives better. Through scholarships, contests, giveaways, and other initiatives, we’ve been able to help our users reach their goals, grow towards financial independence, and take care of their families. ### Back to School learning_crypto

We quickly recognized that one of the most difficult challenges in cryptocurrency was learning the difference between projects, figuring out what all of the words and acronyms meant, and understanding the new concepts that make up this world. We didn’t want to see any of our users confused, and we definitely didn’t want anyone to feel discouraged from entering crypto because it was too much to figure out. We tried to find an online resource to refer our users to, but we didn’t find anything that met our standards of keeping the information straight-forward and digestible. That’s why we started Metal Pay University – a free way for our community to learn about cryptocurrency and all of the concepts that go along with it. Our hope is to turn Metal Pay University into the premier source for quick guides, how-tos, and in-depth explanations for every cryptocurrency topic. We love feedback, so if you think of something you’d like covered feel free to let us know on social media. ### Multi-Coin Support and Utility

Multi-coin support for Metal Pay has laid the foundation for us to implement utilities for our native cryptocurrency Metal (MTL), which of course will remain the featured currency inside of the app. We’ve already given users a fee reduction on buying and selling other cryptos if they hold a certain amount of MTL. Additionally, the fees for buying MTL will soon be significantly lower than for other cryptocurrencies. We also recently added the ability to send and receive cryptocurrencies other than MTL. Now our users can send many popular currencies to each other, including Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Ethereum and more. ### What’s Next birthday_cake

Looking back over the past year, it’s easy to get excited about the future. We feel energized to keep giving back to our community, and we’re excited to see what new friends we’ll make in the years to come. While we’ve already accomplished so much, there’s still lots more to be done. Our short-term goals are to fully launch Metal Pay for Android and other amazing cryptocurrency products, further expand our marketplace to offer many more cryptocurrencies, and so much more. Over the coming year, we’re looking forward to adding a web version of Metal Pay, bringing back round-ups in crypto that were popular with our Crumbs users, and the long-awaited Metal Pay debit card, meaning users won’t need to cash out to their bank to use their Metal Pay cash balance for purchases. We have tons of new updates just around the corner, so you’ll want to stay tuned for what happens next. We’re hard at work finding ways to bring financial freedom to more people, and we believe that starts with Metal Pay. We’re glad you’ve joined us on this journey so far, and we hope you stay with us for what’s coming next – it’s going to be a lot of fun.

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