TronWeekly

Crypto World News

You are here: Home / Search for "xrp"

Search Results for: xrp

A Swiss startup raises $4 mln to enable people to buy crypto like they can stocks

by

Ever since the birth of Bitcoin and blockchain by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto, the idea of decentralized currency dubbed cryptocurrency hit the traditional regulated system of the world where everything used to work under the check of the big fishes (central authorities) noticeably.

The folks around the globe got mesmerized upon learning that they can now transfer their assets worldwide without getting into the in-depth scrutiny of the central banks which would in most cases take more than 2 to 3 days to get delivered.

If digital currencies begin to play an essential part within our economy, we could see that these cryptocurrencies will not only alter the traditional trading dynamics but businesses throughout the world, as well as countries, will be able to generate more export/import services comparatively easily.

The ideas mentioned above struck many individuals’ minds and organizations because the underlying blockchain technology is projected to transform the digital sphere. Many startups and investors started to show their interest in the crypto-space gradually and then came the so-called golden era of the crypto-mania, the bottom half of 2017.

The era when digital currencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple recorded remarkable market growth, benefitting their investors with huge returns.

As it is established that cryptocurrency can be the currency of the whole world, but getting hold of it isn’t as easy as purchasing shares in public organizations. To make the procedures comfortable and swift, many startups are devoting ample amount of their times.

Amun, the Switzerland-based FinTech startup is one of them. Although the startup has been making appearances on the space for a short time only, still their strides have made a notable difference.

In an announcement yesterday via TechCrunch, Amun revealed that they had completed their first round of funding of $4 million to facilitate the crypto investors with stock-like buying options.

Investors like Adam Draper, founder of Boost VC and the son of Tim Draper who is famously known as pro-Bitcoin, Greg Kidd, co-founder of Hard Yaka, Graham Tuckwell, founder of ETFS Capital, and four other unnamed family offices have made the significant contribution to the said fund.

Last fall, Amun, launched ‘HODL’ on the Swiss Stock Exchange which is considered as the “the world’s first physically backed ETF (Exchange-Traded Product)” that is supported by the five giants of the crypto mania: Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Litecoin (LTC).

The HODL exchange-traded product is basically a security; the prices of the digital currencies it is tied to will affect its value accordingly.

Hany Rashawan, CEO and co-founder of Amun, expressed his vision behind the exercise stating that it is to facilitate all interested investors even when they face local restrictions.

“[While] growing up in Egypt, he saw the government ban Bitcoin despite the fact that it offered an alternative to the Egyptian pound, which saw its valuation tank massively in 2016. He believes that products like Amun allow anyone to take part in crypto even when they face local restrictions, as was the case in Egypt and other countries.”

He further commented on his vision while talking to TechCrunch saying:

“We want to make investing in crypto as easy as buying a stock. Institutional investors around the world are looking for a secure, easy, and regulated way of accessing the crypto asset class. Amun’s products do that at a low price in one of the most reputable financial hubs in the world.”

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 and Mr. Gutierrez, Ripplenet reduces transaction fees by 80%

by

“Money makes the world go round.” (It should be “around”… it’s round because of gravity, but nevermind). That’s from a song from the musical Cabaret if you remember. This begs the question: if the money is not flowing around, then what happens to the world?

Well, it might just indeed stop, which is why it’s actually essential to have money flowing around the globe. Not only that, the smoother the money moves around the world, the easier it will be to keep things going for everybody, not only those who actually do have the money.

Transactions are usually just a set of numbers in a ledger. But there is a real-life story behind each one. Think about some university student who ran out of money last night and can’t have breakfast this morning until his or her parents send them some fresh money. And that’s just a smooth, not so important example.

The important thing is that transferring money is not just about money, or making the payments industry richer. It’s also about enabling people all over the world lead better lives and fulfill their potential.

A real person

In this article, let’s talk about one such person. Erick Guitierrez. He was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil and he made a radical life decision when he was 21 by moving to Ireland because he wanted to have a chance to start from scratch. Not too long after that, he moved to Porto, Portugal, because he had a good chance for a nice life there working as a developer, and he already knew the language and the culture.

After living in Porto for a year, his friends back at home urged him to work on a side project. Mr. Gutierrez was getting a huge flow of questions and interrogations about his bold move across continents. So he set out to create a website full of answers.

He called it Euro Dicas. It started as a hobby but it grew so much that by autumn 2017 it was is a full-time job already. Mr. Gutierrez and his team (yup, he had a team by then) explained to people how to move from one country to another, declare taxes, pay them, get a visa and all the detailed information you need to know to move abroad.

It wasn’t long before Mr. Gutierrez found out that his business depended on overseas income and overseas workers. He was working with six full-time employers and more than 40 freelancers from all around the world. Most of the site’s business came from Brazil.

So he needed to transfer money quickly to his collaborators but found that the high fees, the long waiting times and the unreliability inherent in the traditional way of settling international transfers (the SWIFT system) were squeezing him.

In order to get around all the problems SWIFT has, Mr. Gutierrez tried everything. Remittance services, which are supposed to remove a lot of that friction (and sometimes don’t) and international payment services.

Traditional banks only work at office hours, so Mr. Gutierrez had to choose between doing is work, or being in the phone with a bank’s agent so that those transactions could be completed.

And it was still slow and expensive. Every transfer did cost about 10% of the amount in question, and it took five days to be settled. MoneyGram and Western Union were much faster but also more expensive. And the transfer had to be initiated by somebody on Brazil.

Even as new fintech companies as PayPal and TransferWise went online, they were still not that useful. Again, because the fees were expensive, and the services weren’t great at the beginning.

When you’re an entrepreneur trying to do your own job correctly and expand your own business, this amount of lost time and money are just anathema.

BeeTech global

Then, he discovered BeeTech Global. Back then it was a Brazilian startup that offered to settle international transfers for 150,000 customers scattered all around the planet. BeeTech is one of the many remittance services that are taking advantage of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies (more specifically, Ripple‘s blockchain, software, and cryptocurrency). Ripple’s tech has made it faster, more reliable and way cheaper to perform this kind of service for BeeTech and many others.

BeeTech allows Mr. Gutierrez to get money from Brazil twice per month on a regular schedule without worries or uncertainty. The same service allows him to pay his employers, scattered throughout Europe, Latin America, and North America to trust him to pay them in time for the work that keeps his business going.

Payments arrive in one day, the process is reliable and transparent, which are critical factors in running smoothly a business that has so many freelancers in so many other countries.

It’s allowed him to scale comfortably using the business’ capital for growing instead of paying transfer fees. That’s possible because BeeTech’s fees can be 80% or less of those collected by competitors, so Mr. Gutierrez spends from 5 to 10 Euros per month on this.

Mr. Gutierrez considers that the service enabled him to grow his business from half a million visitors in 2017 to 1.5 million, on average, per month during the current year.

The growth has been on the 30-40% range. But more importantly, having access to a good, quick and cheap payments system has allowed him to hire collaborators in many places all around the globe.

Mr. Guitierrez is just one example, but he’s representative of lots of small entrepreneurs scattered everywhere in the world whose work and businesses could benefit greatly from better efficiency in international remittances.

According to the World Bank, low and middle-income countries alone transferred $466 billion in 2017. That is equivalent to 3.3 billion meals, 263,07 million monthly bills paid, and rent for 49.9 people.

Cash flow is the eternal challenge for emerging markets. The delay in a remittance can be the difference between paying the rent in time or buying a needed medicine on time, or (like it’s been for Mr. Gutierrez) paying in time the workers that keep your business going thus keeping their trust.

BeeTech is one of the first companies in the world to adopt Ripple’s advanced blockchain systems to settle international payments. It cuts times and costs by dramatic amounts, which is more meaningful for families and small businesses who can’t afford the waiting time nor the high costs.

Just to give you an idea, BeeTech eliminated SWIFT fees and transferences in every one of its corridors and substituted them with Ripple’s advanced transfers based on the blockchain. That move alone brought fees down from $20 to $2 per transaction.

Customers like Mr. Gutierrez are saving that money, and BeeTech as thus been able to increase its transaction volumes.

Beetech (supported by Ripple’s tech) is giving Mr. Gutierrez a trusted, more affordable, faster way to settle cross-border payments. And that’s its business lifeblood to be sure.

So instead of spending endless mornings at the bank trying to cut through all the red tape included in international transfers, Mr. Gutierrez can take care of is how his business and his company are doing. He expects to have twice as many employees by next year. His goal is for Euro Dicas to cover the planet in full and help more people become global citizens.

This is what Ripple can do for Mr. Gutierrez. But also for me, and you, and the world at large. And that’s also why Ripple already has more than 200 strategic partners in banking institutions and remittance services that are learning that adopting Ripple’s blockchain, platforms and cryptocurrency (XRP) is such a good idea. Everybody pays less; everybody is happier.

Ripple is making money move around the world in the smoothest possible way. And that, in turn, will keep the world moving as well.

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 Becomes the Most Mentioned Cryptocurrency on Twitter (Again)

by

A recent report by Cointrend_JP revealed that TRON is the most mentioned cryptocurrency on Twitter in the last 12 hours. Surprisingly, it surpassed Bitcoin and Ethereum. Taking a look at the report, it is evident that crypto enthusiasts are more interested in TRON than any other cryptocurrency.

The report comes a few days after TRON achieved the 2 million accounts milestone on its network. According to the report, TRX had 466 tweets, BTC had 172 tweets, Ethereum had 101 tweets, XRP had 75 tweets, and USDT had just 21 tweets in the last 12 hours.

The main reasons for this are believed to be the TRON’s 2 million account milestone and the newly formed partnership between TRON Foundation and Tether to add USDT as TRC20 token on TRON’s network.

Tron is unstoppable

At the moment, TRON has become the top choice for Dapps developers in no time, and everyone is talking about it (no one can’t hide this truth). The blockchain achieved the 2 million account milestone just in 252 days after the launch of its mainNet last year.

It was also recorded that that TRON managed to get 70,000 new accounts interacting with TRX Dapps in the past two weeks, according to Ratingdapp. Other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum just has 25,887 new accounts in the same time frame. Additionally, the two most popular Dapps games: Epic Dragon and Crazy Live Dogs in the crypto space run on TRON’s network.

TRON’s Partnership with Tether to Add USDT as TRC20 Token

TRON Foundation’s partnership with the Tether to issue a stable coin on TRON’s network allegedly rose the amount of TRON mentions on Twitter.

This partnership was first announced on March 4th; it was aimed to bring Tether’s USDT, which is valued at a single USD, to TRON’s network during the Q2 of 2019. It is important to note that this is one of the vital switches to TRON’s blockchain.

With the addition of USDT as TRC20 token, Tether (which is the 7th cryptocurrency by market capitalization) will become compatible with TRON decentralized applications and other stuff.

No doubt, this partnership is one of the biggest trends in the cryptocurrency space due to the fact that TRX and USDT users will be able to trade successfully on TRON’s network without no issues, thus, allowing the access to stable cryptocurrency when it comes to price volatility.

Given the fact that the price volatility of the crypto space is severe, the addition of a stable coin to TRON’s network is a welcome development which will surely give Dapps developers and traders some assurance when they transact on TRON’s network.

According to the press release, the main aim of the partnership is to boost the experience of “enterprise level partners and institutional investors,” allowing more flexibility and showcasing more ways on how to use the existing protocols on TRON’s network.

TRON is moving up to turn into one of the significant trends in the cryptocurrency space, its recent achievements: 2 million account milestone and Tether partnership are top ones that would go down in history.

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 speed is a critical differentiator in global remittances, says Instarem CEO

by

How the company was created

It all started with a friend’s bachelor’s party. No, seriously. It was in Thailand. At least that’s the story told by Instarem’s website.

Let’s see. Prajit Nanu, a former global sales director for TMF Group, also Sales & Account Management at WNS was charged with booking a resort for that party in Phuket, Thailand. For that, he had to transfer money overseas and he found it was a nightmare. It was slow, expensive, he had to cut through a lot of red tapes. It just wasn’t worth it but it was unavoidable.

That experience made Mr. Nanu join forces with Michael Bermingham, a close collaborator. Also an expert in compliance in three different continents (Europe, Asia, and North America). They had a vision together. International payments should be painless. Quick, cheap, devoid of paperwork. And that’s how Instarem was born.

A successful global remittance service

The company now operates in the United Kingdon, the USA, Lithuania, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Australia through local offices but it does business in more than 50 countries scattered all around the planet. The company is thriving.

It was the winner of the Singapore Fintech Award Festival in 2017 and declared the Outstanding Digital Cross-Border Money Transfer Service at the ET Net FintTech Awards, 2017.

What’s the firm’s secret for such success? It’s blockchain technology. More specifically, it’s Ripple‘s blockchain technology, software platforms, and cryptocurrency (XRP) which are designed exactly to get rid of almost all the friction still prevalent in the settlement of international payments.

The interview

Mr. Nanu himself explained that in a recent interview. He explained how the market has two main problems to solve: cost and speed. His own focus is in attacking the speed problem first (making international payments as quick as domestic ones). Being part of the RippleNet helps InstaReMit to expand without actively looking for new partners in other countries because every new bank or remittance service that joins the RippleNet automatically becomes a new institution available for business.

YouTube video

When asked why he chose to partner up with Ripple he went back to the question of speed. Ripple’s services and platforms allow his company to solve that problem in a very safe and reliable way which is paramount in his priorities.

This technology allows banks in SouthEast Asia, for instance, to send money to, say, the UK and have the transaction completed in five minutes. It’s huge progress if you take into account that the very same payment, sent through the standard channels, needs at least 24 hours (but often it can be 48 to 72) to reach its destination.

He finished saying “All our success is based on how fast our payments can be”. In other words, all their success is to be Ripple’s strategic partner, more or less. That’s a lot to say.

It seems that every financial institution in the planet who’s giving Ripple a try is falling in love with it, because it really makes things a lot easier for the banks at the same time that it improves the experience for customers because it’s not only so much faster but also so much cheaper.

Ripple has more than 200 strategic partners as we write this, and a new one is announced every week on average.

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.

Is the bearish run of crypto over at last? McAfee and Lund: Bitcoin will hit a million bucks

by

The crypto winter could be finishing. During February’s last week all of the major cryptocurrencies went up impressively (yes, Bitcoin and Ethereum too).

The market capitalization was over $142 billion (half of it was Bitcoin’s), and the gains were quite stable even on the weekend (the market is slightly in red again today, though). The momentum couldn’t be sustained, so the current total market capitalization is at $124.

Bitcoin reached $4,200 (it’s at $3,757 as we write this), but it wasn’t the only coin going up. Many did increase in value, and some were even more profitable than BTC (Ethereum, for instance, went up by more than 10%). EOS, Tron, Cash, and Litecoin went up by 5% or more; XRP by 4%.

If that trend had followed (which it didn’t) market valuations for many cryptocurrencies would have been green and in two figures. But the most important thing is that that upsurge shows that the market is fighting hard to get rid of the bear’s hug it’s suffered for more than 15 months already. And Bitcoin’s price didn’t have to go all the way down to $3,000, as many people thought, for that to happen.

It’s not crazy to think that the events of February’s last week can be the turning point in which we will see consistent growth. Yes, there will be fluctuations, things won’t be smooth (they’ve never been), but we could be looking at the light at the end of the tunnel, and that’s good news in itself.

Why the upsurge?

An expert at eToro is on the record explaining that the reason for the upsurge could have been Ethereum’s sudden scarcity. It makes sense if you take into account that Ethereum lead the way regarding impressing games during that time period, so it does suggest that Ethereum’s shortage was behind the crypto jump.

But it also had something to do with Samsung. That’s Korea’s larger smartphone manufacturer. The company announced that the new handsets would include support for cryptocurrency wallets, which is a shift in the firm’s past policies. This is relevant because it means that the world’s main tech vendors are realizing that cryptocurrencies are here to stay and that supporting them is the way to go.

Samsung, McAfee, and Lund

And even before Samsung’s announcement of adding built-in crypto wallet in their upcoming Galaxy 10, both Jesse Lund and John McAfee stated an opinion: Bitcoin will go all the way up to USD 1 Million, sooner or later. Mr. McAffee has been saying that for years now, and while he remains an authority in the technology world, he’s been so vocal about it that a lot of neutral observers don’t take him that seriously anymore.

Mr. Lund is a different animal. He’s not a tech celebrity, but he still is very influential because he’s the head of blockchain and cryptocurrencies at IBM. Mr. McAfee says the 1M record will happen by next year’s end, and Mr. Lund gives no dates, he just thinks it will happen.

The future

Ethereum could keep leading the way for some time. The network’s hard fork and update (called Constantinople) has been expected for a very long time (and it got delayed because it didn’t work properly). As that update just went online recently (assuming that it works and addresses some of Ethereum’s most disturbing problems), it could keep Ethereum in the vanguard.

But even if Ethereum doesn’t lead the way, there are plenty of projects in the cryptoverse that have very solid fundamentals and real-life value (Tron, Cardano, Ripple, Electroneum, just to name a few). So, crypto will recover never doubt that. When? Well, that’s impossible to say. In the meantime, we still have a chance to buy cheap.

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 scores another hit in the Middle East

by

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.

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

by

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.

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

by

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

by

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.

Tron CEO Justin Sun gets even with Ethereum’s Co-Founder on Twitter

by

The unending saga between Sun and Buterin has surfaced again as Mr. Sun made a tweet today that compares their number of followers on Twitter.

Nevertheless, it seems the bromance between both crypto-giants will forever surface. Ethereum’s creator, Vitalik Buterin, made some clarifications concerning BitTorrent lately; Tron’s CEO, Justin Sun, has also come up with his own comments that directly point to Buterin.

Sun had a caption of his and Buterin’s Twitter page that showcased and compared both Twitter followers. He also added this to the caption:

“Now we are both 832k.”

That is not all; Sun also emphasized that he started six years after Buterin and that he has caught up with the Ethereum creator in the crypto-space. In Tron CEO’s words,

“We started six years after you but we always know it is never too late.”

As expected, Sun’s tweet has sparked lots of comments not only in the Tron community but in the crypto-space generally.

A Twitter user who goes by the name SM Airdrops (also a crypto-enthusiasts) said this:

“@justinsuntron I watch the market, I see how the manipulations are made. And with the fact that your network is growing rapidly, I can say with confidence that TRX is the future leader in terms of percentage growth in the coming years. @vitalikButerin and ETH will be number 2.”

Vitalik Buterin has been in the crypto-space for quite some time now as the founder and creator of Ethereum blockchain, which is one of the top-cryptocurrencies without any doubts. Buterin has acknowledged BitTorrent’s work as an app as a “mega time success.”

Coming back to our story, in just a few hours after Justin Sun’s tweet, Misha Lederman, the co-founder of IAmDecentralized.org and known Tron supporter, posted this on his Twitter page:

“That didn’t take too long…The founder of #TRON @justinsun has, after starting his twitter page 6 years after @VitalikButerin, now surpassed #Etherum’s co-founder in followers. It’s a testimony of new vs. old & the hunger in the #crypto space for progress #IAmDecentralized”

Misha Lederman’s tweet showed that Sun now has more followers than Buterin.

At the moment, the top three decentralized apps on DappRadar.com are all powered by Tron. Other apps that follow are based on EOS. Misha Lederman posted this on the 8th of February,

“To think #TRX has been able to dominate the DApp world so quickly, in under 4 months since activation of Tron Virtual Machine on Oct 12, is nothing short of remarkable.”

More interestingly, Buterin has made no comment or reply concerning Sun’s tweet, but it’s certain he will as he is known for his out-of-the-box sense of humor.

It is essential to know that no feud or war is going on between Tron and Ethereum. In fact, both Sun and Buterin have a cordial relationship. Additionally, regardless of whatever is going on, both digital assets are doing well these days, despite the bear market.

Ethereum managed to take back the second spot from Ripple’s XRP a few hours ago, while BitTorrent token campaign is having a success that’s been hardly witnessed before.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.