Buy Amp

Amp is a collateral token. That is an unusual thing for a cryptocurrency to be, and it is the whole point of it, so it is worth being precise.

Blockchains settle at their own pace. A payment can look finished to a shopper while the transaction behind it is still unconfirmed, and until it settles the merchant is exposed. Amp was built to close that gap. AMP tokens are pooled as collateral against payments in flight, so the merchant can be paid immediately and the collateral absorbs the risk if the underlying transaction never lands.

AMP is not a currency you spend, it is not a governance token in any meaningful sense, and it does not pay you a share of anyone's revenue. It is security posted against someone else's settlement risk. Our guide to stablecoins covers the assets that increasingly dominate crypto payments, and our guide to altcoins explains where tokens like AMP sit relative to Bitcoin.

Where did Amp come from?

Flexa was founded in 2018 by Tyler Spalding, Trevor Filter, Zachary Kilgore and Daniel McCabe, as a payments network letting shoppers pay merchants in crypto at the point of sale. It raised money in 2019 through a token called Flexacoin.

Amp replaced it. Designed with input from ConsenSys, AMP was a purpose built collateral token rather than a simple rebrand, and Flexa announced the migration in September 2020 at a one for one ratio, discontinuing support for the old token shortly afterwards.

The structure since has become more complicated than most descriptions admit. Flexa, the payments company, and the stewardship of Amp itself have separated. Amp's open source development now sits with the Acronym Foundation, led by Flexa co-founder Tyler Spalding, which has also built a broader collateral protocol called Anvil. Flexa remains the main user of AMP collateral. It is not the owner of it. Anyone buying AMP is taking a view on two organizations, not one.

How does the collateral actually work?

Pools, not a single vault. Each application or network connected to Flexa has its own collateral pool. Collateral is assigned to that pool, and the pool's capacity limits how much payment volume it can safely support.

Stake in place. AMP is an ERC-20 token with an unusual internal structure. Balances can be divided into partitions, and a partition can be assigned to a collateral manager without leaving your address. That is why Flexa describes it as staking in place rather than depositing into a contract.

Collateral managers set the rules. A collateral manager is the contract that recognizes collateral, links it to a use, and governs when it is locked, released or drawn on. Anyone can write one. Flexa's uses the Anvil vault, with withdrawal requests unlocking at set intervals rather than instantly.

Rewards are paid in AMP. When Flexa uses pooled collateral to secure a transfer, providers earn rewards, distributed monthly and weighted by how long their collateral has been pooled. Selected pools receive periodic multipliers. The important detail is the denomination: you stake AMP and you are paid in AMP, out of allocations set aside at launch and released on a schedule running for decades. That is not a share of the payments business. It is a distribution of tokens.

Flexa moved Capacity to a third version in February 2025, retiring the previous one mid year and requiring holders to migrate. Anyone who staked years ago and stopped paying attention needed to act.

What Flexa is doing now

This is the part of the story that has changed most, and it cuts both ways.

Flexa is clearly still operating and still shipping. Through 2025 and 2026 it announced payments inside social wallet mini apps, a USDC checkout integration on Base, a nationwide retail partnership with a chain operating hundreds of stores, a leadership transition that made co-founder Trevor Filter chief executive, and a European launch with settlement across the single euro payments area. Its published material is heavily focused on merchants, compliance, stablecoin regulation and cross border settlement.

It also shut down SPEDN, the consumer app that was the public face of the network, on 31 March 2026, and the collateral pool attached to it stopped earning. Flexa said it was concentrating on merchants and payment service providers instead. Older descriptions of Amp that lead with a consumer app and a list of well known retailers are describing something that no longer exists in that form.

The strategic question follows directly from that pivot, and it is the one an AMP buyer should sit with. Flexa's newer products settle in stablecoins on fast networks. A USDC payment on a modern layer two confirms in seconds and holds a stable value while it does. The settlement risk that collateral exists to absorb is much smaller in that world than it was when the alternative was waiting on a Bitcoin confirmation. Flexa still says its pools backstop the volume it processes. But the more its business shifts toward stablecoins on fast rails, the less obvious it is how much collateral that business needs.

What AMP does and does not do

Supply is fixed at 100 billion tokens. There is no issuance mechanism beyond the original allocation and no burn function. The allocation was split between merchant development, developer grants, the founding team and employees, token sales and a network development fund, with releases scheduled over an extremely long horizon. Its use is collateral. That is the function the token was designed for and effectively the only one with economic substance. Governance is minimal. There has been off chain signalling with very high thresholds, but AMP does not govern a protocol in the way a token like a lending protocol's does. It is not the payment asset. Shoppers do not spend AMP. Merchants are not paid in AMP. It sits behind the transaction, not in it. There is no revenue claim. No fee switch, no dividend, no buyback and no entitlement to Flexa's income.

The collateral currently pooled across Flexa's networks is a small fraction of the total token supply, which tells you something about how much of the supply is doing the job the token was built for.

The securities question

This needs stating plainly because it is part of AMP's history and affects where it can be traded.

In July 2022 the Securities and Exchange Commission brought an insider trading case against a former Coinbase employee and identified nine tokens as securities in the complaint. AMP was one of them. Binance.US delisted AMP within weeks as a result. In June 2023 the Commission sued Coinbase itself, naming thirteen tokens it alleged were unregistered securities, and AMP was again on the list.

Neither allegation was ever tested to judgment. The Commission dismissed its case against Coinbase in February 2025. In March 2026 the Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued a joint interpretation naming a set of crypto assets they treat as digital commodities rather than securities, and AMP was not on it, which leaves its status unaddressed rather than settled either way.

The practical position is that AMP has been named twice by a regulator, never adjudicated, and has lost at least one major listing over it. That is a different starting point from a token that has never been mentioned.

What are the risks of holding AMP?

Value depends entirely on demand for collateral. AMP has no other economic use. If Flexa's networks need less collateral, or if the model is displaced, there is nothing else supporting the token. The thesis is under pressure. Fast networks and stablecoins reduce the settlement gap that collateral exists to bridge. Flexa's own product direction leans that way. Staked collateral is at risk. Collateral is posted to absorb someone else's failure. Flexa's public material warns providers to supply only what they can afford to lose, and does not fully document the process by which collateral is drawn on. Rewards are paid in the same token. Staking returns come from pre allocated AMP released over a very long schedule, not from payment revenue. That is dilution of a fixed supply, not income. Two organization dependency. Flexa runs the commercial network, the Acronym Foundation stewards the token and its collateral infrastructure, and neither is accountable to AMP holders. Product discontinuation risk, demonstrated. SPEDN was shut down and its pool stopped earning. Capacity has already required a forced migration. Smart contract complexity. The partition and hook design is more elaborate than a plain ERC-20, which means more surface area, and collateral manager rules vary by pool. Regulatory overhang. AMP has been named as an alleged security twice and never cleared. Listing and liquidity risk follows from that. Concentration and liquidity. A large share of the supply sits in project controlled allocations released over decades, and trading is thinner than for major assets. Volatility. AMP is not a stablecoin. Its value moves sharply and can fall substantially. No consumer protection. Crypto assets held on a trading platform are not bank deposits. AMP is not covered by FDIC deposit insurance or by SIPC protection. You should be prepared to lose the money you put in.

Buying AMP with US dollars on CoinJar

CoinJar has operated since 2013 and lists AMP against US dollars, so you can buy, sell and hold it without converting through another cryptocurrency first. Current charges are on our fees page, and live US dollar rates are on our cryptocurrency prices page.

CoinJar, Inc. is registered with FinCEN as a money services business, NMLS ID 2492913, and holds money transmitter licenses in a growing number of states. You can check whether CoinJar operates in your state before signing up.

How is AMP taxed in the United States?

The IRS treats digital assets such as AMP as property. A taxable disposal can occur when you sell it for US dollars, trade it for another cryptocurrency, spend it or give it away.

The IRS sets out its approach on its digital assets page. Our guide to reporting your transaction history explains how to get the records you need. This is general information, not tax advice. Consider speaking to a qualified tax adviser about your circumstances.