TronWeekly

Crypto World News

You are here: Home / Archives for News / Altcoin News

Altcoin News

Former Ripple CTO jump starts new platform to micropay content creators

by

A former Ripple director, their previous CTO, Stephen Thomas, has started a new blogging platform that allows content creators to get paid in cryptocurrency. The model is a pay per view model where the reader would pay according to how much time they spend on a page.

The San Francisco based startup has launched its public beta recently after having seen some initial success with how the system functions during a 1000 test user closed beta. The closed beta was released in August of last year and had the users get involved by paying $5 monthly subscriptions for the service.

The platform then pays the users who create content for the platform pretty much the same way Spotify does with music. You get paid depending on how much time people spend on your content. The payments were made in Ripple, to the surprise of absolutely no one.

Wallets and Competitors

CEO and founder Stephen Thomas said that the company has collaborated with the Stronghold digital wallet service, making cashing out earning a distinct possibility. The company hopes that the free, bonus content that it will start offering to users will entice them to begin tipping and paying to use the service.

While XRP is the main currency, the content creators can choose to accept any currency that is available on the backend. It is not the first company to try and implement such a system with Yalls and  Brave coming before it. The amount of money coming through Coil seem to be quite small.

Yalls, lightning enabled blog, delivered 20 000 invoices in 7 months. This is in addition to the higher number of members received on that platform. Cent, which uses Ethereum, is a similar platform. It currently has 50 blogs whose creators brought in as little as $55 and as much as $326. This sits in stark contrast to how much Avi Kabani made in the trial. He has written many nonfiction books all in the love and relationships niche. He earned just 21XRP in tips and Coil payments. He spent around $20 of his own money watching Twitch users of the Coil platform.

Thomas Silkjaer, who is a Forbes contributor and is using the Coil platform as well, says that the Coil platform has the chance to replace current paywall systems.

A new paradigm for a new economy

The shift to microtransactions has been swift in videogames. No massive game comes without some form of microtransaction baked into the game itself. The same goes for adult entertainment. Many in the crypto industry see a platform such as Coil being able to upset the apple cart when it comes to paywalled systems.

The Coil is built on open standards and is interoperable. This puts it ahead of the competitors that are currently making more money for their users. If people can quickly bring their websites, blogs or videos in the ecosystem then they will start to have a much larger base of users to flaunt to browsers. Should Coil become a standard feature on browsers, it could revolutionize print and media.

A major problem these days is that there is tiny way to monetize views on news sites. They either hide their content behind a paywall or put in a lot of ads. Many people do not want to get a subscription just for one or two articles they might be linked to a month, the new platform launched by the ex-Ripple CTO is going to tackle all said issue rather nicely. Let’s see how the market responds to it.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Ria Money Transfer partners Ripple for swift remittance

by

Ripple, the parent company of the third largest cryptocurrency in crypto-mania, XRP, has always been considered as one of the dominant blockchain players of the space because of its hefty client list of financial institutions. The blockchain firm is also popular because of its various collaborations towards providing a decentralized payment platform across the globe.

And now, Ripple has shaken hands with Ria Money Transfer, the second largest liquid asset transfer business globally, backed by Euronet Worldwide. Euronet Worldwide is a major name in the realm of electronic payment services providers based in Kansas, United States.

Through this association, long-lasting positive effects are bound to happen on both partners’ huge communities. Ripple will be able to increase its digital and physical footmark along with its ecosystem because of its partner’s presence in 155 countries with impressive 377,000 branches.

Ria Money Transfer, on the other hand, will employ Ripple-backed RippleNet payment network (that comprise of more than 200 financial institutions globally) to facilitate its clientele of millions with swift, transparent and efficient transactional experience who transact $40 billion annually in money transfers.

The announcement was made by none other than Michael J. Brown, CEO and President of the Euronet during a recent Euronet conference call. The President of the company quoted on the occasion about the partnership as:

Juan Bianchi, the CEO of the Euronet’s money transfer segment also seemed confident about the positive aspects the partnership will bring for the sake of both parties. According to him, Ria’s association with Ripple aids to build “innovative payment infrastructure” that aims to ensure easier access to their potential partners while delivering swift and easy payments to its clientele. In his own words:

“At Ria, we have developed the second largest Money Transfer network in the world along with a best-in-class compliance program all connected by our proprietary technology. Ria’s integration with Ripple serves to build rails for an innovative payment infrastructure that seeks to provide easier access to potential partners while delivering faster and cleaner payments to its users. Time is a vital currency for our customers and partners, so we always keep it at the center of our innovation efforts.”

Marcus Treacher, Customer Service SVP (Senior Vice Presiden) at Ripple also shared his thoughts about the promising aspects that partnership will benefit both companies. He said:

“This partnership will enable Ripple to expand the reach and solutions for our partners and the overall banking ecosystem. Ria is one of the top money transfer players in the industry, with the second largest network in the world and is known for its world-class service. By joining RippleNet, Ria not only enhances our value chain for our partners but will continue to improve remittance times and costs for both their customer and enterprise clients.”

Although, last month was considered as relatively satisfactory for the cryptocurrencies.  Ripple’s native token XRP, on the other hand, struggled for the most part of the month. The coin joined the bullish ride for the first few days of the month but couldn’t keep up continuing its positive stride on the trading charts lately.

In the wake of this relatively huge announcement, the popularity of XRP has stepped up the ladder which would surely have some positive effect on its price. When? We hear you ask. We don’t know the exact date but one thing we are positive about is, it will sooner or later (we think).

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Bitrue and Ripple’s XRP Tipbot join forces

by

XRP Tip Bot is a compelling use case for Ripple’s XRP currency that has nothing to do with banks, international remittances, or any of the things that we usually think of when we talk about Ripple and XRP.

It’s a bot, which is geek parlance for a robot. In other words, it’s a bit of code that allows people to send XRP tokens in Twitter, Reddit and Discord through comments. The idea is elementary. If you like a tweet or a comment you see in Reddit, Twitter or Discord and you want to show the author a little appreciation, you just use your xrptipbot to send him a message that also includes some of Ripple’s digital asset. So it’s a robot that is useful to send xrp tips. It’s all in the name.

If you want to use the bot, all you need is to own an account in any of the social media compatible with the service, to have some xrp coins in your tip bot account, and that’s it, you’re good to go.

Bitrue is a different animal. It’s a fully fledged cryptocurrency exchange that supports many of the digital assets available in the world. It’s big, powerful, safe, and it has an excellent reputation.

And now, both projects are creating a partnership that will them both using the other’s technology to make each other more useful.

If you trade at Bitrue, you can, of course, have some XRP’s tokens, but you can also have Bitcoin, Ethereum and many other cryptocurrencies. Even if you arrive owning only bitcoins, the platform will allow you to trade some or all of them for any other cryptocurrency of your choice.

The exciting thing is that Xrptipbot will take advantage of Bitrue’s advanced technology and integrate it into the bot. The result is that you will be able to send and receive cryptocurrencies in many other digital denominations besides XRP.

It’s not clear so far which coins will be supported from the get-go. But it would be a safe bet that at least Bitcoin and Ethereum will be on that list, but it could be any coin in the top 10 by market capitalization, at least.

So should xrptipbot change its name now? We don’t know; we don’t think so. It’s earned a reputation as a brand already so it should probably keep its original name even if it is not linked any longer with XRP exclusively.

This is excellent news for the crypto verse at large. It may seem like too simple an application or a use case. But this is how mass adoption can be achieved passively. Simple problems in which cryptocurrencies make a difference that fiat can’t. You could never send a tip using USD or any other fiat currency through a Twitter message and expect the operation to be completed in seconds.

We salute this new collaboration, and we hope that this example will inspire many other developers to create many more nice pieces of software that can apply the power of the blockchain and cryptocurrencies to solve problems that seem, but that makes a difference in every day of internet users.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Multi-chain Project Ontology to Emanate 100 Million PAX on its Blockchain

by

Last Friday, Ontology, a Singapore-based public blockchain that supports collaboration amongst chain networks with its various protocol groups, made its plan public about the launching of the Paxos Standard (PAX), a digital currency that is backed 1:1 with U.S dollars, on its blockchain.

Through this partnership, Ontology plans to explore the application layout on Decentralized Finance, another partner project of the blockchain, beyond exchanges. According to the announcement, the launch of the PAX token on Ontology is set to take place next month, in May 2019.

Per the official announcement, the resultant token of the Ontology and Paxos collaboration will be based on Ontology’s OEP-4 token standard, and it will continue to keep PAX as its ticker. The firm plans to launch 100 million PAX (initially to meet demand) onto the Ontology network. The newly launched token will be beneficial for individuals as well as businesses that are using Ontology’s Token (ONT) to rely on fiat currencies.

The release notes,

“PAX will enable atomic swaps between the Ontology-based main blockchain and blockchain network and make it easier for individuals and institutional partners to do business pegged to fiat in the Ontology ecosystem.”

It is worth noting that Paxos Standard was launched in September last year after the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) sanctioned Paxos Trus Company for a stable-coin, pegged to the U.S dollars. The currently available PAX token is based on the Ethereum’s blockchain as an ERC-20 token.

The token is already supported by a large number of exchanges as well as ensures open auditing by top tier auditing firms monthly, to ensure the safety of all of its deposits being kept at the registered, insured banks in the country.

As one can imagine, Rich Teo, Co-Founder and Head of Asia for Paxos Trust, seemed enthusiastic about this partnership as the outcome would undoubtedly help them with their vision of transforming the digital currencies with advanced innovation.

 “This news shows how PAX can continue to meet the ever-changing needs of digital asset communities and Paxos’ dedication to advancing innovation in virtual currencies”.

Talking about the partnership, Co-Founder of the Ontology Network, Andy Ji stated that although Paxos has permitted Ontology to launch PAX on the network’s blockchain, still the firm will be responsible for the KYC (Know Your Customer) process and U.S dollar transactional dealings. In his words:

“The launch of PAX on the Ontology blockchain will greatly accelerate real business applications on Ontology, create more success stories of traditional businesses shifting to distributed businesses, and provide enterprise partners and institutional investors with a regulated, reliable, and safe gateway to the world of digital assets.”

At the time of writing this piece, according to the CoinMarketCap, Paxos Standard Token is available for trade at 1.01 USD having a market capitalization of $155.073 million and is ranked at 44th spot among all the cryptocurrencies.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Nano goes in the rest mode shortly after waking up

by

Nano doesn’t get a lot of attention from article writers, analysts and other observers in the cryptosphere.

It started the last week ranked 35th by market capitalization according to coinmarketcap.com. This rank means that while it’s not a negligible project, it’s far away from the big boys in the top 10.

Nano was founded in 2015 by Colin LeMahieu. It’s a very innovative project which aims to make P2P and micropayments very quick, free (as in beer) and reliable. And it tackles that problem from a very different angle than any other project in the world.

For a start, it’s not a blockchain, but several. One for each user. Yes, that’s right, every single user in the network gets his own blockchain, and every user validates its own transactions. Nano’s wallets are not passive coin holders but mining devices of sorts which are pre-calculating the Proof of Work needed for the next operation. That allows for transfers to be instantaneous because the new blocks required to be appended in each chain (the sender’s and the receiver’s) are ready beforehand.

The math behind the blockchain is very light, so it’s very efficient and light.

So transactions are instantaneous, the network has zero transaction fees, and it’s infinitely scalable because there’s a blockchain per user, so the load on the network as a whole is almost non-existent. So it may not be famous (yet) but Nano is designed from the get-go to facilitate micropayments, and its take on the problem is so innovative that it could succeed and achieve mass adoption given enough time.

And during the week, it showed signs of moving forward.

The forecast

There was a technical analysis prediction at some point during the last week. It was made very carefully by an obscure crypto guy who has a rather new YouTube channel (and we’ll tell you who he is as soon as we’ve made sure he’s consistent and the Nano prediction wasn’t a fluke). The forecast was that the token was on the verge of experiencing a bull run that would take the coin’s value up to USD 1.64. That was a bold prediction at the time.

The funny thing is that the prediction didn’t only come true, but it even fell short as the coin reached a height of 1.82, which is remarkable.

There is not enough trading volume for Nano, which is one of the critical signs that support the arrival of the bulls into any market, but the price has remained high.

The aftermath

As we write this, the currency is not ranked at 35th anymore, but it’s fallen to 36th after climbing to 32nd last week. It’s currently trading at 1.34 (went down by 8.40% in the last 24 hours), which is lower than 1.64 but not by much and it’s still an impressive price given the token’s recent history.

So maybe you had not heard about Nano until today, which would be quite reasonable. But now you have, and you probably should keep an eye on it in the weeks and months to come. Nano has been around for about four years, and its fundamentals are strong enough for the project to have survived the 2018 general calamity that was the cryptocurrency market. While it remains obscure and lacks adoption, there’s no telling how far it could get in the future. Remember, this is the crypto verse. Everything can happen, and things get turned upside down in a heartbeat.

Image courtesy of PixaBay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

After Tron, Liverpool FC sends partnership invitation to Binance’s CZ

by

The five times European champions Liverpool FC and currently on course to be crowned English champions for the 19th time after a long time now looks into cryptocurrency and blockchain.

Recently, the founder and CEO of Tron, Justin Sun announced to have received a unique and innovative invitation from the giant English club about a partnership. And now, merely three days later, Binance’s CZ becomes the next in line.

Cryptocurrency and Blockchain in Marketing Operations

The recent activity with Liverpool FC indicates that the club is looking to include cryptocurrency and blockchain in its marketing operations. Like Justin Sun, now Binance CEO, Chanpang Zhao has received a similar invitation from the club to discuss partnership opportunities in more details.

Marcel Weigmann, Partnership Development Manager at Liverpool FC, stated that they are a high profile marketing platform and will bring significant commercial to Binance Exchange.

Is Liverpool FC up to something?

The invitations the club is sending in succession without a doubt means something. The most probable scenario is that Liverpool FC might be planning to release their cryptocurrency on the Tron platform with support from Binance exchange.

Apparently, Liverpool FC is not the first team in the English top flight league to enter the crypto space as eToro (a trading platform provider) had earlier signed a partnership with several other clubs including Brighton & Hove Albion., Tottenham Hotspur, Crystal Place F.C., Southampton F.C., Cardiff F.C., Newcastle United F.C., and Leicester City F.C.

Significance of the Partnerships

As it is with the general crypto space benefits, the partnerships will improve the club’s fan experience purchasing merchandises, tickets as well as the voting on important issues within the club.

Furthermore, it will provide a seamless transfer of players in exchange for cryptocurrencies. Therefore, Liverpool bringing down the invitations down to paper might be a big step towards mass adoption for the cryptocurrency and blockchain.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

JP Morgan plans for progress as Ripple surges ahead with over 200 global clients

by

Ripple just dropped a major announcement, one that is set to get the attention of its competitors surely. In its quarterly report, Ripple displayed a tremendous spike in growth and credits sound business strategies for this exciting development. The enterprise proudly announced to its customers how they were able to witness the purchase of almost 170 million worth of XRP dollars, an impressive 0.32% of all the worldwide transactions of the currency.

Impressive Growth

In the publication, Ripple took time to make reference to the performance in the last quarter, and the surge in performance was more than noticeable. This is especially true for the areas of programmatic and direct sales.

The blockchain firm went ahead to clarify that at the moment, they have been able to net over 200 customers – and they all actively make use of its packages like xRapid, xVia and, xCurrent to meet their needs. In the same report, Ripple stated in this year alone, 19 new exchanges listed XRP, thus bringing the total of the exchanges with the crypto on offer on the trading floor to almost 120.

Ripple is Recording Great Performance, But so is JP Morgan

Even though the figures coming out from the stables of Ripple show commendable growth and performance and a projection for even greater success, it must be pointed out quickly that the competition is real. On the one hand, SWIFT is dead set on the creation of its own cutting-edge platform that will run on blockchain technologies. On the other hand, there is also JP Morgan who has announced to all, its new collection of banks that have signed up to make use of its Interbank Information Network.

For those who are not aware, the Interbank Information Network is a package designed by JP Morgan, and it runs on blockchain technology as well. JP Morgan has explained that the network is recording a steady rise in growth and it is on a gradual rise to dominance of the sector.

The collection of banks that have signed up to use JP Morgan’s network is also a very impressive one – it has 198 customers from different parts of the globe, and that is not all. JP Morgan further revealed that this number is bound to increase stating that as more banks join, it will become even better in terms of performance.

JP Morgan promises a drastic reduction in delays and the resultant costs associated with transactions – the ultimate beneficiary will be the customers and clients on the network. Some of these banks are Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited, Bank Saint Petersburg, Bank of Nanjing, China CITIC Bank International Limited, China Guangfa Bank, Ho Chi Minh City Development Joint Stock Commercial Bank and others.

What this trend signifies that although Ripple is doing an amazing job with its growth, the contemporaries and rivals like JP Morgan are also not resting on their oars. At the end of it all, the overall winner will be the one who satisfies the needs of the customers the most.

Image courtesy of Geograph.org.uk.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin couldn’t intern at Ripple in 2013

by

Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s founder and leader (hence the man who created second-generation blockchain technologies) tells the world how he tried to get an internship at Ripple Labs in San Francisco –and failed in a casual tweet.

According to Mr. Buterin, he tried to work at Ripple as an intern during mid-2013. That’s the same year in which he started to develop the project that later became the Ethereum blockchain and network. The reason that kept him away from the company behind the XRP currency was red-tape related to the American visa.

Ethereum’s creator is not a young developer looking for work anymore, but one of the world’s foremost experts in cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. Oh yes, he’s also a cryptocurrency millionaire. But aside from his personal wealth, his network was the first one to support the development and deployment of decentralized applications and smart contracts.

That achievement has given his network and himself a vast prestige that remains current today, even as the Ethereum network faces significant challenges at the present time. He said that the reason he couldn’t make it to Ripple as an intern was that the company was newly founded.

In his own words:

https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1119148572107165696

Mr. Buterin needed a visa so he could pursue his career inside the US as he is Russian. And he’s not alone in being denied working options because of visa problems. His shared his “fun fact” to complement a message posted by Brian Armstrong (Coinbase’s CEO) in which he was detailing how Eric Yuan (Zoom’s CEO) was denied a US visa for eight times in a row. That didn’t stop Mr. Yuan’s career who now enjoys an excellent reputation in the technology world.

And the lack of a visa didn’t stop Mr. Buterin either. Ethereum is more prominent and more influential in the crypto verse than Ripple, and its cryptocurrency is also more substantial than XRP.

XRP is indeed augmenting its use in the banking and remittance industry. But a recent revelatory study reveals that about half of Forbes Billion dollar companies use the Ethereum blockchain in one way or another. And Ethereum’s blockchain is several years younger than Ripple’s, so it’s gained more acceptance in less time.

What would have been of the crypto world should Mr. Buterin been able to work at Ripple? Maybe it would have enhanced his creative drive. Perhaps we wouldn’t have an Ethereum network. It’s utterly impossible to know for sure. But the one thing that remains clear is that apparent failure to achieve a goal in the immediate future doesn’t necessarily mean that a person’s plans or future success are done for. Mr. Buterin and Mr. Yuan are living proof to that effect.

The anecdote also speaks about Mr. Buterin’s resilience, which is going to be a vital asset if Ethereum is going to overcome its current challenges. For the last few months, the network has been facing direct competition from Tron, EOS and other third-generation blockchains, and it’s not been faring well.

Ethereum has been falling behind mainly because of performance issues and the price of gas, which is expensive when compared to the low costs in more up-to-date and better-performing blockchains. And that’s why the project needs the founder to set things straight.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Ripple’s XRP arrives at Uquid, here is what it means

by

When it comes to mass adoption and cryptocurrencies, very few fintech firms in the world are as exciting as Uquid.

Uquid is based in England, and it’s designed as an all-in-one payments platform based in cryptocurrencies. Most platforms of the kind usually support the use of Bitcoin, Litecoin, and a handful of other digital assets. While this firm boasts the privilege of using Bitcoin (it has its own dedicated debit card), it also supports more than 88 cryptocurrencies other than BTC, so the list includes all the big names in the crypto verse plus many different coins you’ve probably never heard about.

The idea behind the site is quite simple. You get an account, and you top it up using GBP, EUR or USD. If you’re still into fiat currency, ofc. But if you’re part of the brave new world, you can fund it with the digital asset of your choice. Then you use your funds to make payments. The flagship service of sorts for Urquid is paying for mobile phone services, but depending on the country you live in you can pay your utility bills and many other services.

Moreover, once you have an account, you’re eligible to ask for a free debit card, if you live in one of the countries in the “allowed” list. And that list includes 130 countries and 44 overseas territories. The US is, unfortunately, not on the list.

The debit card can be funded by Bitcoin. If you prefer, say, Litecoin, then you need to ask for another debit card, the one that supports 90+ tokens. So you ask for the card, send some documentation, and it arrives on your door in the snail-mail. Then you can use the card to pay for goods and services in the streets of your own country, withdraw cash from ATMs, go shopping on the web, or in any other way in which you usually use the card associated with your savings bank account.

This is not the first or only service in the world that allows users to have a crypto-based debit card or that will enable you to use your digital currency with almost the same versatility as fiat currencies. The thing about Urquid is its worldwide availability. Most debit cards of this kind are usually limited to a specific economic or geopolitical zone (which is the European Union, most often), while you can have Urquid’s card almost anywhere in the world, recharge it over the web, and keep using it locally.

Ripple at Uquid

So what could be novel about the service this versatile that already supports more than 90 tokens? Well, that now they support the world’s third coin by market capitalization which, as a matter of fact, has also been the cryptoverse’s most profitable coin for two years in a row (and it could very well be for three, but it’s early to say): Ripple’s XRP.

This fits in very well with Ripple’s recent push to promote XRP’s mass adoption outside the banking system. For years, Ripple has focused very tightly on having banks and remittance services adopting its network, software solutions, and cryptocurrency, so they settle their international transfers with a higher degree of efficiency, safety at a ridiculous fraction of current costs. So the Californian company didn’t make much of an effort to develop partnerships that could build a payments network for retail users in the way that Bitcoin or Litecoin have. Well, that’s changed.

Ripple’s seen the writing on the wall, and now they’re securing partnerships (very quickly too) so that XRP comes out of the banking ecosystem and supports use cases for end-users as well. Uquid support is the latest development in Ripple’s push to reach the mainstream (well… the thing that passes for mainstream in an environment that remains marginal, as the cryptosphere still is).

But this isn’t all. Ripple is pushing in many different directions.

Ripple’s XRP in Luxembourg

It recently joined INATBA. That’s the European Commission’s International Association of Trusted Blockchain Applications. This group’s mission is to link blockchain organizations with policymakers all around the European Union. The goal is to create a suitable regulatory framework that brings the cryptoverse much closer to mainstream adoption.

Just recently, Pierre Gramegna who serves as Luxembourg’s Minister of Finance had a heart-to-heart with Chris Larsen who is one of Ripple’s founders. Don’t be fooled by Luxembourg’s diminutive geographical size. This is a country that holds a lot of clout in Europe when it comes to finances because it’s home to several powerful banks.

The meeting is more meaningful because of its timing. It happened just as a new report was published by the Luxembourg Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (LPAE). The report draws a comparison between Bitcoin and XRP. The report’s conclusion is quite relevant as it found XRP not to be a security. After close study, the report said that because the XRP token is “intended to be used, now or in the future, as means of payment for acquiring goods or services or as means of money or value transfer” it can’t qualify as a security. This is huge news for Ripple and XRP.

The report out of Luxembourg will go a long way in settling the security issue that has been hanging over XRP’s future since the notorious Craig Wright tweeted with his typical attention-seeking lack of prudence that XRP was a security and not a cryptocurrency.

Also, an official decision on the subject will probably help settle the very same issue in the US, where the SEC has been dragging its feet to rule definitively about XRP’s status. While Ripple has insisted vehemently that its cryptocurrency doesn’t meet any of the criteria needed to be a security, SEC is still taking things slowly and keeping silent even though it already ruled on Bitcoin.

So while Ripple is trying really hard to expand its presence and adoption in Europe (but the Urquid thing would rather mean that it’s expanding all over the planet), it hasn’t forgotten any of the world’s areas that are critical for doing business. Namely, Asia.

Ripple’s Asian expansion

Ripple’s Asian operation is based out of Singapore. The Asian office is currently staffed by 12 people, but the company has announced that it will double up its Asian division to 24 employees during the current year.

Ripple is expanding in every possible way. It keeps getting new strategic partners in the banking and remittance industry at the tune of one per week, on average. And it also keeps joining forces with companies like Uquid, that are all about mass adoption for cryptocurrencies.

As we get this article ready for publishing, XRP is trading at USD 0.321651. That’s way below the forty cent level that has been something of a fetish for XRP holders as well as many analysts. That shouldn’t discourage anybody.

But Ripple keeps expanding at a time in which most other cryptocurrency projects are shrinking which only comes to show that the project’s fundamentals are stronger than ever. The company is working hard for adoption and to find all kinds of new use cases. All that hard work is going to increase demand and trading volume for the cryptocurrency which, in turn, is going to end up pushing its price up, even as the rest of the market goes down. Indeed, because of the relative isolation that its primary use case (the international banking system) affords the coin, it always moves somehow independently from the rest of the market.

Keep an eye out for Ripple and its currency, XRP. One day you could find that you’re delighted that you did.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Ripple whale moves 20 million XRP

by

The Ripple ledger recorded a biggish payment worth 20 million XRP a couple of days ago, April 17th. The operation was worth 6.71 USD million at current XRP prices (the token is trading at $0.335736 as we write this). But the price was quite lower at the time the transfer went through. During that day, XRP traded between 0.3157 and 0.32533, so it would have been a little cheaper at the time, depending on the exact time of transacting (which hasn’t been disclosed), but not by much, not more than 6%.

The operation was reported by a Ripple blockchain watcher known as XRPL Monitor on Tweeter:

https://twitter.com/XRPL_Monitor/status/1118246091437301760

This kind of transfer is usually called a “whale movement,” and some observers pay attention to this kind of operations. The reason is that making such payment or transfer requires for the originating party to buy XRP tokens before it could send them, it’s the kind of thing that increases trading volume and drives the currency price up.

As whales go, this one is not that impressive. Sure, it’s most probably a lot more than what you and I have stored in our crypto wallets, but in the past, we’ve seen transfers as high as 73.2 million XRP in volume. When that whale sang, the transfer was worth about USD 15 Million, so the whale in question is not even half as big. That’s why other observers such as “Whale Alert” didn’t take the trouble to report it.

So we don’t know the time of the transfer, who sent it or who received it. Well, we know the address of the receiving wallet, of course, as that’s standard information stored in the Ripple ledger, but we have no idea who it belongs to. We do know that, before the transfer, it held 0.99982 XRP.

So what else do we know? Nothing more, strictly speaking, but we can make a few educated guesses.

We can start by assuming that the sender didn’t buy any XRP to send, so he had them ready in advance. Why? April 16th has been the slowest day of the week for XRP trading. The price was the week’s lowest, and the trading volumes were almost non-existent. A buying order for 20.000.000 XRP would have affected the market in apparent ways. At least it would have prompted a spike in trading volume indicators which we didn’t see at all.

Before you object, yes, XRP’s daily trading volume is slightly above a billion dollars. So a lousy six million would not have changed the game at all in 24 hours right? Well, wrong. If it had happened because of a single order, it would have produced a jump in the charts, especially since, as we wrote already, it was a prolonged day for XRP traders.

Our suspicion is also confirmed by the sender’s balance which is of 1,898,209,057.9865 XRP. That’s about USD 626 million. So this was either a wealthy guy paying a bet (or something of the sort) or one of Ripple’s institutional partners was settling a pending account. There are no more clues for the time being, except that the receiving wallet was basically empty, but that tells us nothing.

So we haven’t seen Moby Dick in the XRP market yet. But, if you know the story, every whale is valuable in its own way.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.