YouTube Rival Rumble Teams With Tether to Add Bitcoin Tipping for Creators

Publicly traded video sharing platform Rumble is integrating Bitcoin tipping, the firm’s CEO Chris Pavloski announced while onstage at the Plan B Forum in Lugano, Switzerland. 

The firm is working with stablecoin issuer and major investor Tether to enable Bitcoin tips, which are expected to be rolled out in full by early to mid-December. 

“Right now, we’re in the testing phase,” said Pavloski. “We’re going to start rolling that out alongside Tether here in the coming weeks.” 

The YouTube rival boasted around 51 million active users in Q2, down from 59 million in the first quarter of the year. 

“Potentially, this is one of the biggest user bases that would start adopting Bitcoin and stablecoins,” said Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino when onstage alongside Pavloski. 

Last December, Tether committed a $775 million investment in Rumble, which positions itself as an anti-censorship platform and has become popular with conservative content creators.

“Bitcoin and stablecoins can serve not only part of the population that is very dear to Tether—that is the emerging markets population—but also in the primary economy like the United States,” said Ardoino. “You can actually find use cases for Bitcoin and stablecoins that really are going to empower creators, and bring them the security of the fact that they will not be debanked for what they say.” 

The video sharing and streaming firm is also working with crypto payments firm MoonPay to create its own crypto wallet, another feature it claims will enhance the creator experience on the platform. 

Last year, Rumble adopted a Bitcoin treasury strategy and revealed plans to invest up to $20 million in cash reserves to stack BTC. In March, it followed up on those plans, adding $17.1 million in BTC to its balance sheet. 

At the end of Q2 the firm held around $25 million in BTC, according to its quarterly update. 

Shares in Rumble (RUM) closed up 0.56% on Friday, changing hands at $7.14. Shares are down more than 45% year-to-date.