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.