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Ripple scores another hit in the Middle East

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Another week, another partner

Not a week goes by without Ripple securing a new strategic partnership for its crypto-based international payments platform and, every week, we report it to you. The week before the last one was particularly good for Ripple (with the Saudi Monetary authority announcing its support for mass adoption in both Saudi Arabia and the Emirates).

Last week hasn’t been any different, as the news got in. This time it’s the Al Ahli Bank of Kuwait who announced a partnership with Ripple that will enable them to offer instantly settled cross-border payments.

ABK declared itself to be one of the few Kuwaiti financial institutions that will use Ripple’s technology to bring transaction times from days to minutes, fees from dollars to cents. That’s what’s at the heart of this partnership.

The announcement was published last Thursday. It’s the first step in ABK’s adoption of Ripple’s tech that will allow the bank to give its customers immediate confirmations and a secure procedure.

So now, immigrant workers in Kuwait will be able to use ABK’s services to send remittances to family, friends and loved ones back in their home countries much more quickly and much more cheaply.

ABK and the Ripple Net

It brings ABK into the RippleNet (Ripple’s partner network) which is a blockchain-based network, decentralized, global, centered around Ripple and its banking partners. The network aims to enable customers from different banks in many countries around the planet to transfer money across borders quickly, cheaply and safely.

Somnath Menon, ABK’s group chief operating officer, has this to say:

“This partnership with Ripple is aligned with our unwavering philosophy of reimagining a simpler bank. We have significant interests in cross border remittances and plan to harness the power of Blockchain technology for making global payments faster and more convenient for our customers”

He continued,

“As smart technologies continue to rapidly transform the financial sector, we remain committed to enhancing our offerings to our customers, and staying ahead of the innovation curve.”

Mr. Navin Gupta, managing director for South Asia and Meta at Ripple also had something to say  “We look forward to supporting ABK’s ongoing efforts to enhance its digital banking services, by providing our innovative blockchain solutions for speedy cross-border payments.”

Ripple and the Islamic financial systems

Ripple keeps making headway into every continent in the world. But unlike many other blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies, Ripple is finding acceptance in the Islamic world which is particularly important because the Islamic financial services and traditions are not always lined up with those we are used to in the Western world.

So Ripple’s tech is turning into something of an ambassador for blockchain technology in the Middle East and other Islamic countries of the world.

And this is not just corporate good news. It’s real-world use cases that can turn Ripple’s XRP (or any other cryptocurrency) into a useful form of money that can achieve mass adoption.

And it’s mass adoption that can change the market’s game because that’s how a coin’s value becomes based in authentic demand, instead of relying on speculative pressure, which is still the main force behind most cryptocurrencies (if not all).

So good news for Ripple is good for the company indeed, but also for crypto at large.

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.

PLAY GOC arrives at TronWalletMe

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The platform

PLAY_GOC (https://play.goc.network) is one of the 200 decentralized applications running on Tron’s network and blockchain.  It’s a gaming/betting app that includes many classic casino games such as Dice, BlackJack, Roulette, Baccarat, a virtual slot machine, and many others under development.

It’s been very successful. It’s already the world’s third-largest dApp, according to dappradar.com (a website that monitors the activity in the cryptoverse’s blockchain applications) serving more than 6.5k users every day. Crazy Dogs Live is the only largest app in Tron, and not by much (6.6k users daily).

The Tokens

It’s not just a casino, in the traditional sense of the world. It’s decentralized, unlike any traditional gaming platform. And it also a Tron-based cryptocurrency called RWD which you mine in the website just by playing the available games and another one called PLAY.

The main value behind the PLAY GOC developing team is that using blockchain technology should be fun and rewarding for users and that a gaming site should offer a variety of activities besides just playing and betting digital assets. That’s why the platform includes a trading platform as well (Play Market) in which you can trade a variety of Tron-based tokens if you so wish.

PLAY is the token that fuels the platform for the main part. It’s designed strategically to enhance the PLAY GOC environment and you can exchange it for TRX or other Tron-based tokens.

RWD is an incentive for you to keep playing. You play using a variety of Tron-based tokens in PLAY GOC and as you place your bets, the system is mining RWD tokens on your behalf. Owning RWD tokens also allows you to join in some of the site’s special activities.

You can buy either token in some of Tron’s decentralized exchanges, like the one included in Tronscan’s platform. The tokens are supported by the TronLink Wallet, which is very popular because it’s very easy to install and use. It’s a Google Chrome extension, so it takes less than two minutes to install and set up a personal Tron Wallet that supports almost all the currently available TRC10 and TRC20 tokens, including, of course, TRX.

Support from TronWalletMe mobile app

And now, TronWalletMe, which is a secure p2p crypto wallet and exchange platform for Tron-based tokens are adopting PLAY GOC’s in its wallet. The wallet is a mobile app you can get for either your Android or Apple phone and it’s not your typical run-of-the-mill wallet as it includes a decentralized exchange for you to trade in Tron-based currencies.

https://twitter.com/PLAY_GOC/status/1096489097739157504

This is a nod to PLAY_GOC’s achievements as a decentralized application by the Tron community which is using it, playing in it, and enjoying it. While there wasn’t any doubt in any Tron community member’s mind about how important the gambling platform is becoming, having its tokens supported by more and more of the other apps in Tron (TronWalletMe in this case), create more awareness and credibility for PLAY GOC.

And it deserves it. PLAY GOC maybe looks like a simple (but nice) gaming website. It’s a lot more than that. It’s one of the manifold ways in which Tron will achieve total web decentralization sooner or later.

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.

Tron Now Powers More Than 200 Decentralized Applications

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Third generation

If you read our posts regularly, you probably already know that Tron, as a third-generation blockchain is not all about a coin (Tronix or TRX in these case) but about a programmable platform that can develop and deploy smart contracts and decentralized apps which aim to decentralize the world wide web as soon as possible.

Yes, the coin is valuable, but it’s not like first-generation blockchains in which there’s nothing else. In Tron’s case, the coin is supposed to facilitate the network’s other aims.

We’re happy to report that Tron has been very successful very quickly in making progress as a decentralized network.

No, the web is not fully decentralized yet, but there are already 200 decentralized apps running on Tron’s network and the top 24 alone boast 65,000 individual users daily. That is quite a lot if you take into account that the other two top dApp platforms (EOS and Ethereum) are nowhere near in terms of daily users or token flow.

Tron at dappradar.com

So you’re not impressed yet? Well, have a look at dappradar.com. This is a website which monitors activities at the world’s main blockchain platforms. According to it, three out of the world’s four most popular dApps are running on Tron (Crazy Dogs Live, PLAY GOC, and Epic Dragons).

This is amazing progress, and it’s happened very quickly. Tron has been around for fewer than two years, and it became an independent network only last May. So all these achievements have happened in fewer than 12 months. That’s been enough for Tron to become more relevant as a decentralized network than Ethereum, which was the rule for years before Tron became independent.

And the best is still to come. The Tron Foundation bought BitTorrent a few months ago, and it’s working on merging it into Tron’s blockchain.

BitTorrent, with more than a hundred million users scattered all over the planet, has been the world’s largest decentralized network for a very long time, and its file-sharing client is about to become another decentralized application at Tron.

Can you imagine that? The network will grow by millions in a single day, just as soon as both networks become united.

If you haven’t tried out any of Tron’s apps, we encourage you to buy a few TRX tokens and give them a go. Some of them are quite simple, but they’re all quite entertaining. And it will give you an opportunity to chat with other people interested in blockchain technology and Tron as well.

Green numbers

As we write this, Tron’s TRX is the world’s eight cryptocurrency by market capitalization (according to conmarketcap.com), and it’s trading at USD 0.024136 and in green numbers. So the token is still quite cheap, but we seriously doubt it will remain that way for long.

Every active dApp in the network is a use case, and the more use cases a coin has, the better chances it has to become demanded and, hence, valuable.  The network is strong, it’s useful, and it’s growing at high speed. And so will the token’s value.

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.

More good news for Ripple, this time it’s from Malaysia

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Ethereum vs. Ripple

The cryptocurrency market is an incredibly strange thing. A few days ago, a traffic analysis report found (and published) that Ethereum’s decentralized apps are basically abandoned by users and that most of them are empty.

Ripple, on the other hand, has been reporting great news for months. They have a really positive announcement to show to the cryptoverse at least once a week, and that’s on quiet weeks.

So what happened next? Ethereum’s price went up, it recovered the market’s second spot by market capitalization (which was Ripple’s for several weeks already) and Ripple’s XRP price went down. You see, this is the kind of thing that makes ordinary people be wary of the cryptoverse.

But it remains a close thing. We’re talking about 13.2 vs 12.3 billion USD in capitalization, so the difference is hardly meaningful (Bitcoin is almost at 64 Billion) so the table could turn with just a small fluctuation in either digital asset and that kind of thing is what happens almost every day in crypto.

An interesting question at this point would be: if news for Ethereum keep being negative (don’t forget that the network update had to be postponed also) and good for Ripple, will that keep giving Ethereum an advantage?

More good Ripple news

We will find that out soon enough because good news keeps coming Ripple’s way. This time, from Malaysia. And they’re not just good, they’re better than usual.

A few days ago, Malaysia’s CIMB bank launched a remittance service called SpeedSend. And it runs on Ripple’s technology. Transfers will be available to the USA, the UK, Australia, and Hong Kong and the service will be available in both CIMB Banks and CIMB Islamic Banks.

This is important for several reasons. The bank is announcing very explicitly that it’s the first bank in Malaysia to introduce Ripple’s technology as a commercial service. It’s in the ads for the service. That alone creates a lot more of awareness about the company, the project, and the technology.

Santander, for instance, already has a mobile app in Europe which allows for real-time money transfers that are powered by Ripple but the bank doesn’t make much of a sing and dance about it.

Besides awareness, there’s the fact that this is a commercial product deployed at the production stage. Ripple has more than 200 clients (banks, remittances) scattered all over the planet but most of them are using xCurrent or xRapid (Ripple’s platforms) at the testing stage, not on production, which mean they could still get cold feet. So for Ripple, this move is not just about getting attention, but credibility.

And last but not least: the bank is deploying the service in both its standard and Islamic branches. This can only be possible if authorities and specialists in Islamic financial services (yes, they do exist, they’re quite different, and they don’t operate by Western standards) have found Ripple to be an appropriate service for Islamic clients.

That opens the doors for Ripple in the whole of the Islamic world, and it’s not clear that most of the Islamic financial establishment will accept any other digital asset in the future.

Ripple’s future

So Ripple keeps moving forward and, at the same time, XRP’s value keeps receding slowly. But this is not something you should worry about. XRP is fundamentally sound, it was the world’s most profitable coin during 2017 (the year of all profitable coins) and chances are that fundamentals will end up being more important in fixing its market price, rather than sheer speculation.

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.

Tron (TRX) investor? Be Careful with Kiwidex.io

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The Warning

A couple of days ago, the TronTokens Official Twitter account issued a warning about a little-known website called Kiwidex (kiwidex.io). We show you the text of the tweet:

In order to assess the warning about the website we took a few minutes to get acquainted with kiwidex.io and we, as well, detected a few things that are a tiny bit suspicious.

The website

It starts at the get-go. The website sells itself as “The world’s first decentralized exchange bases on TRON and supports mobile terminal”. Let’s not pay attention to the fact that people who’re doing this website can’t even write English (it’s supposed to be “based” not “base”). But nevermind the grammatic pedantry, the statement is just completely false.

The first Tron-based decentralized exchange was the DEX hosted at Tronscan. There’s just no way around that. And after Tronscan it was GOC. So things start to look fishy as soon as our browser loaded the webpage.

And about the rest of the warning, well, things don’t look any better.

If every deposit you do into the site is sent into a single address every time, then it just cannot be a decentralized service. The whole point in decentralization is that no single node in a network has any privilege, so if this was decentralized (as it claims), every transfer should be sent to a different node in the network.

Of course, those would have to be authorized nodes to take deposits in, so if the list was small, it would make sense, but you can’t have a decentralized network of one, just as you can’t have a football team of one.

So it’s centralized, that seems quite obvious?

What about P2P? Well, it’s a corollary. You need peers in order to build a p2p network, and if everything goes to a single address, that means that there are no peers, but only one central authority.

Should everybody avoid it?

So far we’re only telling you about things that are absolutely obvious because of the warning and from a very quick inspection to the website. Should you listen to that Twitter warning and stay away from the site? We believe so.

There are already good, reliable, and safe decentralized exchanges in the Tron network. We already mentioned two. So there’s is no need for you or anybody else to take even the smallest risk by sending tokens into a website that looks weird from the get-go.

Let’s just be clear about something: We don’t have proof positive that kiwidex.io is false, or dangerous, or fraudulent. What we are saying is, quite simply, that it doesn’t look great, and running useless risks is just pointless.

Investing in cryptocurrencies is already quite risky (which was the only truthful statement we found at the site), so why make it riskier by using a service whose reputation is questionable so easily and so quickly?

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.

Virginia PD Talks About Why its Public Pension Turned to Bitcoin (BTC)

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One of the recent announcement by the two public pensions in Fairfax County, Virginia, showed that institutions are not only developing an interest in cryptocurrencies and blockchain but that they are already prepared to invest in this space. The two pensions in question include Police Officer’s Retirement System and Employee’s Retirement System.

Now, however, Fairfax County Retirement Systems decided to speak up about the decision, stating why they chose to give cryptocurrencies a chance and bet on Bitcoin.

The amount invested in blockchain and crypto is below 1%

According to the Fairfax County Retirement Systems Director, Jeff Weller, the retirement system invested $21 million into the fund. In his recent post, Weller points out that $10 million came from the employee’s retirement system, and $11 million came from the police officer’s pension.

Since these are two separate funds, it means that the employees’ fund only dumped 0.3% of the fund, while the percentage is only slightly bigger (0.8%) when it comes to the police officer’s fund.

Furthermore, the move is not as simple as just purchasing Bitcoin. The fund, started by Morgan Creek, will use this investment to invest in blockchain companies, many of which have already joined the program. This will also not be just any company, but those with real potentials, such as Bakkt, Coinbase, and alike.

While it is true that there is risk involved, this is the type of risk that accompanies any investment, and not just those related to crypto. However, Waller also mentions that the “Fairfax’s investment team determined that the expected returns from this investment were in line with the level of risk incurred.”

The fund will invest in crypto as well

While the majority of the fund (85%) will be dedicated to investing in blockchain opportunities, Morgan Creek argued that a portion should be invested in crypto directly. However, according to Weller’s post, only around 15% of the funds will be used for that purpose.

While the crypto market remains volatile and the prices are currently low due to the bear market, an investment at the right moment could bring excellent returns, which are still in the realm of possibility, even under these conditions.

Still, Morgan Creek has not made an official investment at this time, possibly because there is a chance that Bitcoin will drop one last time before the bear market loses its energy. If it happens, BTC might fall below $3,000.

For now, the Blockchain Opportunities Fund is the first of its kind, although it is possible that it will spark a new trend of institutions investing in crypto and blockchain through other, similar funds. Especially if the current bear market ends up being followed by a rally. The only potential issue is how the sales of large amounts of Bitcoin purchased by the funds will affect the token performance once the funds are ready to cash out?

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.

Ethereum is back as the world’s second best cryptocurrency. We tell you why

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Ethereum spent a very long time as the world’s second most important digital asset (it’s hard to beat Bitcoin) both because of market capitalization, and technological influence. Over the recent weeks, Ripple’s XRP took over that second spot. But the market felt a bit of a pump last week, and it pushed ETH back to the second place.

Recent market performance

The price has risen by about 1% over the last day (again), and it’s now trading at USD 123 and still in green numbers. As both BTC and XRP are trading in red numbers, that’s been enough for ETH to gain some momentum, even if BTC saw a 5% rise last week when the Litecoin network was upgraded.

It seems that Ethereum’s growth has to do by some major movements made by some of ETH’s larger holders, according to data by a cryptocurrency whale tracker. That’s even more remarkable as the rest of the market keeps moving sideways or going down.

It’s all about the whales

We’ve seen how USD 8.5 million worth of Ethereum’s tokens have been traded a couple of days ago only by some investors known as whales (which means they’re big). So they increased the coin’s daily volume.

This happens because the digital asset market is still dominated by retail and small investors, so changes that would be considered relatively small in other trades can make a huge difference in crypto.

The new capitalization is worth more than $12.6 billion, which is not that much more than Ripple‘s XRP ($12.5 billion) but still enough to change the rankings. Litecoin is at fourth with $2.6 billion, so it’s still nowhere near to compete for the second or third spot.

Ethereum now has a market capitalization of over $12.6 billion, slightly above Ripple’s XRP $12.5 billion market cap. Litecoin, which powered to fourth place in the list of largest cryptocurrencies last week, has a market cap of $2.6 billion.

So is the bear market over, at last?

“Crypto price movements over the last week have been encouraging, with litecoin experiencing an impressive price surge of around 40%, but it’s important to remember that we’re not out of the bear market just yet,” explained Mati Greenspan, who works at eToro (one of the world’s main crypto brokers) as senior market analyst.

“While some might argue the bears are weakening, bitcoin needs a strong breakout above the psychological level of $5,000 before the bulls can sharpen their horns in earnest.”

In something of an ironic development, ETH’s value went up soon after a report announced that Ethereum’s decentralized apps don’t have that many users anymore. 86% out of 1,300 active apps were completely unused last Saturday. And only 7% of all those apps managed to transact any tokens on the previous day.

The expectation is on the air to find out which digital asset will become the next Bitcoin and also for the next bull run. But having prices as high as they were in December 2017 will not be very useful if those rises happen without mass adoption for at least a handful of essential projects.

In the meantime, Ripple’s XRP is stuck at its current level, which is rather mysterious as well, because, unlike Ethereum, Ripple has been reporting good news for months.

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.

You can now spend TRX at more than 40 million locations as Tron joins SpendApp

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Spend is an exceedingly interesting fintech platform which probably should be getting more attention from the fintech aficionados and industrials.

Fintech stands for “financial technology,” and it’s a relatively recent trend in communications, technology and financial services that aim to harness the power of the internet, mobile communications, and software to empower the considerable fraction of people in the planet that do not have access to traditional financial service but that still have a mobile phone or some kind of access to the internet.

What is Spend.com?

The company is trying to “create financial inclusion” for more than 2 billion people in the world who don’t have a bank account, and that can’t get one, for whatever reason. It describes its service as a bridge that connects those billions of people to financial services tools.

And it takes things further than most other fintech firms because it works in traditional legal tender (fiat currencies) as well as in cryptocurrencies.

The hope is to simplify banking into something painless, user-friendly, and available from the palm of your hand. The reason is to help customers to control their finances (and hence, their futures).

The content in the previous paragraph could sound very ambitious and idealistic, for sure. But Spend has developed a full digital banking structure that really makes you feel that all those good intentions are becoming a reality.

The platform includes several services available at spend.com, the company’s website, as well as a mobile application (SpendApp), and a debit Visa card that allows you to use the money (fiat or digital) stored in your accounts and use it as if it was money from your savings account that you can spend in every business that takes Visa.

While this is not the first firm to offer that kind of service to cryptocurrency holders, this kind of service remains very rare and localized, while Spend aims to be global.

Spend and the cryptoverse

But let’s focus on the mobile application for now. It does many neat tricks. It can hold several currencies, for starters, traditional or digital. Among the digital assets supported currently in the app you can find all the big boys such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, XRP, and more are being added (more on that later).

But maybe the most impressive thing is that it allows users to buy digital coins directly with their local, national currency just by linking their debit card to the app or web account. And this is really very unusual.

Most cryptocurrency exchanges in the world have nothing at all to do with debit cards, credit cards, or local fiat currencies because the trading pairs they offer are crypto-to-crypto (BTC/ETH, for instance) so you can’t really use them unless you own some crypto coins beforehand.

This discourages new users a great deal. Only a few exchanges actually allow you to buy crypto with fiat (Kraken, for instance) but the process can be intimidating for new users as it includes several identity verifications performed in several ways.

And all that introductory information is just so you can understand easily what’s the real news and why it’s so relevant for crypto at large, for Tron in particular, and maybe even for you as well.

Spend and Tron

Tron’s digital coin, called Tronix (TRX), which is the world’s eighth largest by market capitalization, and that can be particularly tricky to buy, is, as of now, available as a supported currency in SpendApp.

This means that if you install the app (assuming it’s compatible with your device, which is not a given, but you can do it via web too) now you can buy TRX just as soon as you install and configure it. And if additionally, you get one of Spend’s debit Visa Cards, you’ll also be able to use your TRX on the street as if it was real money kept in your real account.

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.

Enjoy Your Valentine’s Day with Tron

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What a phenomenal week this has been for the Tron’s community. If we say that this week has been dedicated to Tron’s lover and follower by the foundation, not many will negate the words. Why not? Just a couple days ago, Tron carried out the first ever airdrop of its new token BTT (BitTorrent Token), which is going to continue every month for next six years, of course to the TRX holders.

Every TRX holder in this span of 6 years will be rewarded 0.11 BTT for each TRX they hold. Remember according to the stats; this airdrop is going to be the biggest and longest one in the history of crypto0sphere, where over 10 billion BTT tokens have been distributed in record time, 4 hours. Yeah, that’s how fast the Tron’s Blockchain is. The next airdrop is going to take place on the 11th of next month.

That’s not all, at the time this record-breaking development was happening, Justin Sun, the main face behind the much-loved crypto and its Founder, announced that they have a surprising news in their bucket for their esteemed followers for the “Valentine’s” day this year to celebrate love, friendship with them, which will be revealed as the day itself will be nearing.

As we all can imagine, the announcement stimulated a lot of thrill among the devoted followers, and everybody in the crypto realm was waiting for the surprise to unfold. And guess what? The much awaited moment didn’t take long to reach.

Subsequently, Tron, the 8th largest and much-talked cryptocurrency in the digital world, announced that they are going to reward five lucky people among those who are going to join their Valentine’s day campaign. The announcement on twitter went as following:

Off course every person is fortunate who has someone special in their life. And surely no other feelings can be matched with the feeling of love and friendship about someone special, but when the homage for those feeling is given by none other than Tron on what you believe in, sounds epic.

Also, on this beautiful occasion, the Tron foundation also wanted to pay the homage to one of the legendary personality in the digital world, Hal Finney, who was the very first man in the history of crypto-space to receive a bitcoin from Satoshi Nakamoto himself. And besides this, he also made a good number of contributions to the digital world. We, the Tron lovers still miss him.

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.

Morgan Creek’s $40 Million Crypto Venture Fund Anchored by Two Public Retirement Systems

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A new announcement made a couple of days ago, February 12th, by the Morgan Creek Digital revealed a $40 million crypto venture fund, which was anchored by two public pensions. The two public pensions are the Police Officer’s Retirement System and Employee’s Retirement System, both of which are located in Fairfax County, Virginia.

The fund has attracted a lot of attention, and it already has a number of investors, including a hospital system, a private foundation, but also a university endowment, and an insurance firm.

Institutions marching to crypto

Large pension funds have been considering cryptocurrencies as an investment strategy in the past, with one California-based public pension even considering this possibility back in 2016. However, cryptocurrencies are still at a very early stage, which is why many hesitated to make a move.

While the funds are located in the same area, they are still completely separate, and each of them has its own investment committee. The police pension fund contains around $1.45 billion in assets, and the government employees fund has around $4.25 billion. Both funds are quite large, which is expected to bring closer attention to other public pensions and potential interest in blockchain investing.

The goals of the fund

At first, the new fund will focus on equity investments, with a few potential investments in token-based projects that see a certain amount of cash flow, while they abide by the US SEC regulations. Also, the small portion of the fund will be dedicated to holding small amounts of certain cryptocurrencies.

Morgan Creek decided to make this move due to the public pensions’ desire to diversify their investment portfolio and go beyond investing in bonds and stocks. As the blockchain technology already attracted attention due to its unique applications in numerous industries, the public pensions saw it as an interesting opportunity.

The fund attracted the attention of many in the crypto and blockchain industries, and it already managed to close several deals with established firms, including Bakkt, Good Money, Coinbase, BlockFi, Harbor, and others.

While there are real opportunities for public pensions willing to take the crypto and blockchain route, it was difficult finding those who would be willing to make such a move at this point. Many issues in the crypto world still remain unresolved. However, the new development shows that the institutional investors are not only interested in coming to the crypto space, but that they have already arrived.

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.