Market Mad House

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. Friedrich Nietzsche

Ripple (XRP)

Cryptocurrency

Can Ripple (XRP) Make Money??

Given these points, speculators should watch closely to see how central banks react to Ripple. Ultimately, Ripple’s fate is in the central banks’ hands. If central banks accept it; Ripple can become the most valuable cryptocurrency around.

Consequently, a central bank could increase Ripple’s value by using it. Conversely, a central bank could destroy Ripple (XRP) by banning or suppressing it.

Ripple is interested in remittances because they are big business. The World Bank calculates that people sent $613 worth of remittances in 2017. Significantly, the volume of remittances grew from $573 billion in 2016 to $613 billion in 2017.

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CryptocurrencyOpportunities

How an Emerging Markets Currency Crisis will Cause Coin Prices to Explode

A fast-moving emerging markets crisis can greatly increase demand for cryptocurrencies. Altcoin prices could shoot up as residents of crisis nations seek safe havens for their money.

Cryptocurrency is the easiest and fastest way for Argentines, Turks, Venezuelans, and others to move their money out of country. All a person needs to convert funds to altcoins is a credit card and an internet connection. Anybody can download a digital wallet, and buy cryptocurrency in a few seconds.

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Cryptocurrency

Is Stellar Lumens a Good Cryptocurrency Investment?

Therefore, Lumens is useless in its ultimate goal as a gateway to the financial system for the unbanked. Stellar looks more like a blockchain software solutions company than a platform.

This has translated into a lot of value for Stellar Lumens. The XLM had a Coin Price of 27.3¢ and a Market Capitalization of $5.123 billion on July 20, 2018. That produced a 24-Hour Market Volume of $142.18 million on the same day.

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Cryptocurrency

Ripple Lawsuit might Change Cryptocurrencies’ Legal Status

One way Coffey v. Ripple Labs would change the cryptocurrency market is by proving that ICO and altcoin owners have many of the same rights as stockholders.

If courts agree with the claims of Coffee’s lawyer; James Q. Taylor-Copeland, the case might force the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to regulate all ICOs and cryptocurrencies like securities.

That might create a level of regulation and legal oversight that would make cryptocurrencies unprofitable and perhaps unviable in the United States. It would certainly threaten all the financial services altcoins such as BAAB (BAX) and Bancor (BNT).

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Cryptocurrency

Is Ripple integrating with Apple Pay?

Widely-used solutions like Apple Pay cannot work with cryptocurrencies because the sheer volume of payments that would generate would crash the altcoin system. Or worse payments might take hours to process, which enrage customers.

It sounds as if Ripple might have partially solved the blockchain scalability problem. One way it may have done is to provide a direct connection with bank accounts. The Ripple Team is planning to roll out Money App, a smartphone tap, designed to connect Ripple and bank accounts in Japan this fall.

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Cryptocurrency

Is MoneyGram Making Money?

Ripple might help MoneyGram make money because people would be able to send XRP payments to its stores.
The customers would be able to pick up the payment in cash or get it converted into fiat currency and downloaded into a debit card at MoneyGram. Another popular use for Ripple would be to convert it into fiat currencies to pay utility, tax or other bills from MoneyGram.

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CryptocurrencyOpportunities

Ripple Joins Hyperledger, Central Banks experimenting with Blockchain Securities Swaps

Ripple (XRP) has joined the Linux Foundation-sponsored Hyperledger Project. This move is potentially disruptive because the Hyperledger Project is an

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Cryptocurrency

The Universa Cryptocurrency is Building a Better Blockchain

The Universa team claims that their system will be one thousand times faster and one hundred times cheaper than Bitcoin (BTC). They also boast that their system will be far more scalable and capable of offering 20,000 transactions a second.

That compares favorably to Visa’s (NYSE: V) global payment system which is supposedly capable of handling 24,000 transactions a second. Visa claims to be able to process 24,000 transactions a second and to handle 140 million transactions a day. That might translate into a lot of cash of if Universa is capable of living up to that hype.

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Opportunities

PayPal adds Instant Transfer to Venmo

This should greatly increase Venmo use by eliminating two of the greatest drawbacks to the app. Those drawbacks were the inability to use it at most brick and mortar businesses, and the difficulty converting Venmo funds into paper cash.

Payments will be the big tech battle of 2018. Expect competition in this sector to heat up as PayPal starts raking in more cash.

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Cryptocurrency

Major Bank Santander rolls out Ripple App

It is not clear if the Santander App will be integrated with the Amex experiment. Ripple and wire-transfer service MoneyGram International (NASDAQ: MGI) are testing currency transfers, Fortune reported. It is not clear if Santander will be part of that experiment either. News stories have not said if Santander or American Express is planning a Ripple Amex Cards. Such a card would be a logical next step.

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