It was announced today that 1400+ credit unions of Catalyst Corporate may use X-rapid sometime in the future. A launch date has not been announced yet but hopefully it will be this year. They are going for the Mexican Corridor first which represents around $30 billion dollars a year in cross-border payments. This would round out to be $100 million a day or so if x-rapid can dominate 100% of it. Of course Corporate Catalyst does not own 100% of the payments in the corridor so the real number would be smaller but it is a good start and they could expand to other corridors if this is successful.
Tag: banking
Closer Look at Euro Exim – XRP’s first banking partner
A lot of noise has been made about Euro Exim, XRP’s first banking partner that is committed to using the cryptocurrency to transfer money across borders. A closer look at this bank, however, reveals that it is not what is claims to be. It has a license in St. Lucia but it has lost its authorization in the UK to be a bank. The authorization was taken back early in 2017 and now the bank in the UK can only act as a remittance service, which is fine for XRP as it is targeting remittance. It is also a very small bank with just over $500,000 in assets as of 2017(2018 numbers are not available yet) so it will not raise the price of XRP by itself but may act as a trial run for larger banks to adopt XRP. This will be important as a first trial run for other larger banks to look at but will not cause significant volume itself and therefore has go be well to entice other banks to join. Although this is an important event, people have overhyped it way too much due to the size and the nature of this bank.
Bitfinex insolvent? Bitfinex and Tether finds new bank to run operations
Last week, it was reported that Noble Bank of Puerto Rico was insolvent and this was significant because they were the main bank which Bitfinex and Tether operated out of. However, we also found out that Tether had been moving its assets away from Noble bank for the last several months into other banks and last week, they announced that Tether and Bitfinex have ditched Noble Bank and are looking for another bank. It was reported over the weekend that they have settled on HSBC bank and will now run operations out of there. There are claims of Bitfinex’s insolvency but they have denied those allegations. I personally do not believe Bitfinex is insolvent because even though the collapse of Noble Bank caught us by surprise, it did not catch Bitfinex by surprise as they and Tether have been moving assets out of that bank for the last several months and probably still have most, if not all, of their assets. Tether’s credibility may have taken a hit though, especially as replacements with less murky backing like the Gemini Dollar and USD coin have come onto the scene. For now, I remain cautiously optimistic with Bitfinex and unless they start locking user’s accounts and stealing funds, I will hold my stance on them.
Swiss Startup Raising over $100 million to open crypto bank
A Swiss Startup has raised $103 million in order to start a bank for cryptocurrencies. It is headed by former UBS executives and will focus on high-networth clients and institutional investors instead of the average investor. It will provide financial products and consultation for such clients. The Swiss Bankers Association has stated that blockchain projects that do not have ICOs can be treated like regular businesses but those that do have ICO must follow stricter guidelines and regulations. This seems a lot more lenient that other places around the world and I expect Switzerland to get a headstart over more regulatory heavy places like North America or Europe on Blockchain innovation and technology. The bank has plans to expand to Hong Kong, China, Singapore, and Malaysia.
XRP Technical Analysis and Price Forecast(and not its not $589)
Looking at the graph of XRP, it does not make as much sense as other price graphs of cryptocurrencies because of the large increase in price over the last week which breaks the descending pattern of the last 5 months. Unlike many other coins where you could forecast off the peaks and valleys. XRP has basically been on a steady downward decline since April without any real significant peaks or valleys during that time so you cannot plot the lines of high and lows to see if they intersect anywhere. The current upswing in price would make that intersection point actually below the current price. But we know that XRP probably is far more likely to rise by the end of the year than drop so that technical analysis does not really work. Current movements by XRP suggests that it is driven far more by breaking news and reactions to that news that by any kind of technical price graph and since we know that X-rapid will be launched most likely within 30 days, that the SWELL conference is coming up next week, and that at least 7 companies have already signed on to use X-rapid when it launches, it can be said that the chance of another large upward trend is highly likely within the next month or two. Therefore at this point, since its already dipped from 59 cents to 44 cents, XRP looks like a great buy for the short and long term.
* Note I am not a professional financial adviser and this is not professional financial advice. Trade at your own risk as I am not responsible for your gains or losses.
XLM backed by UNICEF and Goldman Sachs? Can it hit $.5 this rally?
XLM had two great pieces of news this weekend in that Goldman Sachs included them in their investment products and UNICEF started to accept them for donations to their charity. These are two huge uses for XLM in addition to their partnerships with TransferTo for remittance and their banking application in accordance with IBM should make the XLM blockchain a very busy place in the time to come. XRP recently had an over 100% rally and Stellar looks like it could be poised to do the same soon as the news could possibly bring Stellar to past 50 cents per coin.
Stellar Lumens(XLM) launches with IBM “World Wire” universal payments system
IBM finally has officially announced its “World Wire” universal payments system on the XLM blockchain. Over 90% of the world’s largest banks use IBM services so IBM will be pushing this new payment system and technology hard to its customers, giving XLM a huge gateway into the banking world. This gives XLM an advantage over XRP as they now have a giant global company in IBM backing their network and cryptocurrency. This gives XLM a large use case and huge potential for further growth as many banks will probably adopt the XLM blockchain and could potentially be a problem for XRP if XLM becomes the standard via IBM in financial transactions.
Ripple(XRP) added to Coins.ph, can be used to pay bills in the Philippines
Ripple was recently added to coins.ph which means it is available to 5 million customers in the Philippines as a way to pay bills. Coins.ph has allowed people to pay bills in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Bitcoin Cash. This is another small step for Ripple to have widespread adoption and use and bodes well for Ripple going forwards. Hopefully more banks and merchants can integrate Ripple into their systems and increase the cases of real-world use for this cryptocurrency.
Corporate Fatcat tells Crypto Kids to “stop printing money”
Corporate Fatcat banker and BIS chief AgustÃn Carstens is strictly against Cryptocurrencies because he wants people to “stop printing money” because well, only he and his banking buddies should be able to do that. The case is that cryptocurrency is not backed by anything and is disaster for the environment. The first part is true, cryptos aren’t backed by anything, but neither are US dollars or most other fiat currency, since they are not attached to gold or silver. It is true that fiat like the US dollar has value because you use it to pay taxes. But wait, some states in the United States have bills in legislature that will allow payment of state taxes(not federal taxes) in Cryptocurrency. If this happens, cryptos will attain state backing and will have intrinsic value. As for being an environmental disaster, I think he, himself, is an environmental disaster(I know its not right making fun of people like this but I can’t help it since he’s essentially criticizing people of printing money which is what he does as a job.).
Ripple Giving XRP to encourage adoption
Ripple(XRP) has been giving away XRP in order to encourage adoption from banks and financial institutions to use their cryptocurrency for transactions. They want ripple to be the middleman in currency conversions and transactions. For instance if you want to transfer USD to someone in Japan and have them receive it as Japanese Yen, you would send the USD, it would covert into XRP, then on the other end convert back into Japanese Yen before it hits their account. As many partnerships as Ripple has announced, there isn’t that much direct use of it. Right now its just a speculative investment that people can buy and sell and that cannot last forever so Ripple is using incentives by giving banks and institutions more of their cryptocurrency in order for them to adopt it for use. If this works and Ripple because a standard for conversions and transactions, the price will skyrocket and it’ll be a big signal that the world is ready for real crypto adoption in business applications. Regardless what you think about Ripple, if you are a true fan of Crypto, you want this to work out.
Cryptocurrency Vlog 