Leading Bitcoin payment processor BitPay has supported ShapeShift, a small company which specializes in transferring between different crypto-currencies.

Since its creation in 2009, Bitcoin has been joined in the crypto-currency market by several offshoots such as Dogecoin, Litecoin, Primecoin and others, collectively referred to under the moniker “Altcoin.” Some cater to niche audiences (such as Sexcoin, which was created for consumers of “adult content” to have their own payment method), while others place slight to drastic variations on the “mining” mechanism through which Bitcoin’s controlled inflation takes place. Different forms of Altcoin vary in other aspects as well, such as their respective market caps, but for most of them, the underlying fundamentals remain the same.

With such proliferation of crypto-currencies, it is no surprise that there is demand for conversion between them. ShapeShift is a service that promises to do just that: according to former CEO Beorn Gonthier in 2014, it can be described as a “vending machine,” in that it offers currency exchange services without the traditional buyer-seller relationship coming into play. Gonthier said that Shapeshift views its service as a reflection of the way Bitcoin itself works, and that its primary goal was to increase liquidity in conjunction with any spikes in volume and demand.

Since then, the company has not shown signs of slowing. Current ShapeShift CEO Erik Vorhees has gone as far as to call his service “the Google Translate of crypto-currencies.” In any case, the company has drawn BitPay’s interest due to the ease of transfer that it offers. In a recent blog post, the latter gave ShapeShift its endorsement, detailing in a step-by-step diagram how users can use the service to exchange in crypto-currencies.

Founded in 2011 and based in Atlanta, Ga., BitPay is currently the largest bitcoin payment processor in the world, serving approximately 60,000 merchants around the world and doing around $1 million in business every year. It states its mission as making it easier for businesses to accept bitcoin payments. With the spread of various forms of Altcoin, the cooperation with ShapeShift, which BitPay claims does not even require an account from its users, seems like the logical next step.

What’s more, Bitcoin’s popularity since its inception has caused prices to shoot upward, with the current price per bitcoin valued at approximately $664 after reaching an all-time high of approximately $1,124 in November of 2013. While there has been a steady overall decline since then, the currency’s popularity has not let up, and there has once again been a recent increase. According to BitPay CCO Sonny Singh, trading in bitcoin strongly reflects fluctuations in the value of currencies such as the Chinese Yuan and the euro, with people treating the crypto-currency as somewhat of a safe haven, similar to gold.

There has been a more promising development as well, however. Singh goes on to note that in countries such as Venezuela and Brazil, people are starting to rely on bitcoin instead of their countries’ currencies. Both phenomena would seem to explain in part the shift in BitPay’s customer base: While 70% of transactions two years ago occurred in the USA, Singh notes that the situation has been turned on its head, with only 30% of transactions now domestic.

Whatever the broader implications of this development, BitPay has embraced ShapeShift as a trading platform that can cater to the needs of customers seeking to diversify their “crypto-portfolio.”