Category: Crypto

Categories
Crypto Finance

Ripple (XRP) Might Be Adopted By American Express For Cross-Border Payments

American Express (AMEX) is a global financial services firm that provides its clients with banking and payment services. Overall, AMEX is valued at about $33 billion in income and an overall staff count of over 50,000 people. In the end, they’re an enormous international company. Now, some rumors suggest that American Express thinks of implementing Ripple (XRP) for cross-border payments.

Intriguingly enough, Ripple company itself has mentioned American Express and not just in a solitary tweet but also in a full news article the company posted it in the news section of Ripple’s site.

American Express clearly understands the problems that SMEs face with traditional banking, from cross-border payments to access to credit. The company’s “Open Forum” is a popular and highly respected platform of resources and support to help small and medium-sized businesses grow.

Ripple

Will indeed American Express (AMEX) adopt Ripple (XRP) for cross-border payments?

The news released by Ripple mentions the problems the companies offering cross-border payments have to conquer in the nowadays financial system and how expansive and slow are the current systems that conduct international transactions.

In fact, AMEX is own of these businesses and its representatives already admitted that there is a need for faster and cheaper systems to conduct cross-border payments.

As we speak, American Express makes use of the Ripple’s xCurrent platform for just a few of its transactions but, as Ripple reported, AMEX would like to extend its anti-fraud prevention measures regarding cross-border transactions and would love to do that using the Ripple (XRP) blockchain.

With Ripple blockchain helping to facilitate behind-the-scenes transactions, American Express customers in the US are already seeing faster payments. Ripple (XRP) and American Express have also aligned themselves from a fraud perspective.

Ripple

Will this signify that we might get to see Ripple (XRP) adopted by American Express for its cross-border payments? It might indeed be so, first because AMEX is looking for more secure transactions and secondly because they’re already successfully collaborating with Ripple.

Categories
Crypto News

IMF Leader, Christine Lagarde, Said Cryptocurrencies Will Affect The Way People Pay Bills Or Invest

The official blog of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) changed its perspective on cryptocurrencies from “the dark side of cryptocurrencies”, as published in an article in mid-March, to “the promise cryptocurrency holds”, in a note signed by Christine Lagarde, the IMF’s leader, recently.

According to the French lawyer, Christine Lagarde, currently the leader of the IMF, “with more than 1,600 cryptocurrencies in circulation, it is inevitable that many will not survive the process of creative destruction”, but “just as some of the technologies born out of the computer bubble have changed our lives, the cryptocurrencies that survive could significantly influence the way we save, invest and pay our bills.”

“That’s why the authorities should be open-minded and develop an impartial regulatory framework that reduces risks while allowing the creative process to bear fruit,” Lagarde added.

The IMF changed its point of view regarding cryptocurrencies and Christine Lagarde’s statements prove it

With regard to the benefits provided by cryptocurrencies, Lagarde was remarkably positive, admitting that cryptocurrencies make quick and inexpensive financial transactions possible.”

The IMF director general added that the technology on which cryptocurrencies are based, known as distributed general ledger, could facilitate a more efficient functioning of financial markets through the execution of smart contracts.

Christine Lagarde also highlighted the capacity for encrypted storage of important records in order to protect the property rights, strengthen the market confidence, or promote investments.

The IMF’s leader admitted that smart contracts “could eliminate the need for some intermediaries” but in her opinion “the ‘FinTech’ revolution will not eliminate the need for trusted intermediaries such as brokers and bankers.”

In short, Lagarde believes that cryptocurrencies “will propel the business world to a better balance between centralized entities and decentralized applications”, thus proving that IMF’s views regarding the cryptocurrencies market have changed radically in just a few months.

Categories
Crypto Markets

Coinbase Acquired Keystone Brokerage Firm And Circle P2P Payments Platform Seeks Banking License

The renowned cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, continues to make its way to emerge on the traditional stock market. Already one of the world’s leading Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrency trading platform, Coinbase has acquired the California-based securities brokerage firm Keystone.

While the details of the agreement are not yet known, speculation is growing that it is the first step for the cryptocurrency-related firm to offer products based on digital assets in the form of shares, in the future.

Keystone Capital Corp. is a US FINRA registered broker and is licensed to operate as an investment advisor, as well as to operate an alternative trading system, or ATS.

For Coinbase, which currently markets only the most capitalized cryptocurrencies on the market, the acquisition of Keystone could open up new business opportunities and allow it to offer its services to institutional investors with ease. Also, the acquisition of Keystone also increases the possibility that Coinbase may, in the future, expand on Wall Street.

But first, Coinbase will need regulatory approval to operate under Keystone’s licenses. President and COO Asiff Hirji said Coinbase is confident that he will get approval from the authorities. The company has advanced that in a matter of several months it will be able to integrate Keystone’s operations, once it obtains such approvals.

While Coinbase acquired Keystone, Goldman Sachs’ Circle P2P payments platform pursues a federal banking license

Coinbase movement is not the only one of this kind that has taken place in the last few hours.

Also, the P2P Circle payment platform, supported by Goldman Sachs in one of its final rounds of funding, pursues a federal banking license with the Office of the Currency (OCC) and registration as a brokerage and trading venue with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

According to Coin Telegraph, Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle, has said that the platform first seeks the approval of the SEC and, to that end, has already withdrawn the tokens that do not confirm the US supervisor’s guidelines for the Poloniex cryptocurrency exchange platform, which they acquired for $400 million in late February.

Experts point out that Wall Street is taking small steps to give space to cryptocurrencies, thus the news that Coinbase acquired Keystone and Circle P2P payments platform seeks officials’ recognition shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Categories
Crypto

Huobi Develops Its Own Blockchain, Huobi Chain, For A Decentralized Huobi Cryptocurrency Exchange

The Huobi exchange house, based in Singapore, wants to migrate its operations to a decentralized and participatory blockchain, for whose development it opened a competition to select the leaders who will carry out the plan. The project is called the Huobi Chain Project (HCP) and was announced by the Huobi Group on June 6th through its blog, adding that the initial investment will be 30 million Huobi Token (HT)(approximately $174 million).

In this regard, the company’s CEO, Leon Li, said that the main objective of the project is to gradually transform Huobi’s centralized platform into a decentralized and open source one, where the community can freely participate and regulate its operation. Thus, in Huobi Chain, the exchange of values, monetary collection, and other applications will be carried out in a decentralized manner.

The plan includes the gradual migration of Huobi to this new public blockchain and the upgrade of Huobi Token (HT) from a general token in Ethereum (ETH) network to one based on the new Huobi blockchain, according to the briefing note.

Huobi announced a Huobi Chain competition for attracting devs to help them move to a decentralized Huobicryptocurrency exchange

To launch its blockchain, Huobi also announced the bases of the Huobi Chain Superhero Championship (HCSCP) program, through which the company will choose the developers of the project, which will be implemented in 18 months, distributed in four stages. The first three months will be dedicated to the election of these leaders through this program, which began on June 6 with a public call for candidates and teams, which can be registered until July 5th.

It is also indicated that after the election, the Huobi Chian project will be led by these leaders, who will work with board members to oversee the process and contribute to its progress into new phases.

It is worth mentioning that Huobi is not the first cryptocurrency exchange platform to implement its own decentralized blockchain. Last March, another important exchange, Binance, announced a similar project when it launched Binance Chain which is a public blockchain designed to facilitate the transfer, commercialization, and generation of blockchain assets, which also required the update of its Binance Coin (BNB) cryptocurrency.

Categories
Crypto News

Nano (NANO) Can Be Purchased at a Significant Discount in Light of Recent BitGrail Hack Attack

Investing money in cryptocurrencies is as risky business because it’s nearly impossible to tell when an altcoin’s price will go up or down. Therefore, we advise all cryptocurrency enthusiasts to never invest more than they can lose. Nonetheless, Nano is making headlines today because its price has taken a drastic dip during these past couple of days. The reason why Nano’s price is down is directly related to the BitGrail controversy.

The BitGrail Controversy

In case you didn’t know, recent reports are showing that a group of hackers managed to steal 15 million of XRB tokens via the BitGrail exchange. This means that $150 million worth of XRB tokens were stolen from investors and this led to people losing their trust in Nano and the developers who are in charge of it.

Directed Acyclic Graph Architecture

On the bright side of things, analysts are reporting that if we omit the BitGrail hacker attack, Nano is a great altcoin to invest in, especially when it comes to blockchain technology. Nano is the first ever altcoin to utilize the Directed Acyclic Graph block lattice architecture and this is quite important because it gives Nano an edge over its competition.

The Directed Acyclic Graph architecture makes it possible for Nano to feature faster transactions than other altcoins who are using older architectures such as Bitcoin for example. Fast transactions make Nano an ideal payment altcoin, but things get even better than this.

No Fees

The main reason why Nano is such a great payment altcoin is because it doesn’t charge any fees. Therefore, investors who are looking to perform fast transactions without having to worry about fees should consider giving Nano a try. In addition, Nano’s price is currently lower than usual, and this means that investors can purchase it at a significant discount.

Exit mobile version