Day: January 25, 2018

Bloomberg

Ripple Wants XRP to Be Bitcoin for Banks. If Only the Banks Wanted It Bloomberg That in itself would be a fairly interesting business story. But then Ripple became a part of the great cryptocurrency melt-up of late 2017. The company owns a lot of a digital token called XRP. From late September to early January, XRP saw an ... MercuryFX and IDT Sign Up to Use XRP - RippleRipple Q4 XRP Markets Report - RippleRipple all 104 news articles »

A class action suit has been filed against exchange and lending platform BitConnect, which recently closed following U.S. cease-and-desist orders.

Internet commerce company Stripe has created a stir in the crypto markets today. The Irish online payments firm has ended support for Bitcoin and is eyeing new contenders. It is a significant move for Stripe which was the first major payments company to support Bitcoin back in 2014.

According to reports Stripe will stop accepting Bitcoin payments as of April 23. The company cited network congestion, increasing transfer costs, and lengthening processing times as the primary reasons for ditching BTC. Bitcoin remains one of the slowest and inefficient cryptocurrencies on the market at the moment. Without serious upgrades such as the Lightning Network internet payments companies will start seeking alternatives.

Slow and expensive

On a company blog post it was stated that Bitcoin had become better suited as an asset than a means of exchange. It also claimed that price volatility had led to an increase in the failure rate of transactions denominated in fiat currencies. By the time the transaction had been confirmed it was often for the wrong amount as the price of BTC had changed again and transfers are not possible in real-time.

Rising fees were also blamed for the divorce with the king of crypto. Stripe’s product manager, Tom Karlo, went on to say;

“For a regular Bitcoin transaction, a fee of tens of U.S. dollars is common, making Bitcoin transactions about as expensive as bank wires. Because of this, we’ve seen the desire from our customers to accept Bitcoin decrease. And of the businesses that are accepting Bitcoin on Stripe, we’ve seen their revenues from Bitcoin decline substantially. Empirically, there are fewer and fewer use cases for which accepting or paying with Bitcoin makes sense.”

Enter the alternatives

The online payments processor will need an alternative cryptocurrency to facilitate payments and it is already looking at Stellar Lumens and OmiseGO. Karlo went on to state;

“OmiseGO is an ambitious and clever proposal; more broadly, Ethereum continues to spawn many high-potential projects. We may add support for Stellar (to which we provided seed funding) if substantive use continues to grow.”

The blog post mentioned a few other altcoins such as Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and ‘other Bitcoin variants’. The effect on both XLM and OMG was positive. Lumens reached a weekly all-time high of $0.63 a few hours ago, up over 14% on the day. It has reached sixth position in the market capacity charts with $10.8 billion at the time of writing. OmiseGO gained almost 12% on the day reaching $19.02 a few hours ago. The altcoin is not as volatile as some of its brethren and has shown a steady increase of over 230% over the past three months.

Stripe currently powers online transactions for over 100,000 global businesses and private individuals. Whichever cryptocurrency they choose is likely to enjoy some positive chart action.

The post Online Payments Company Stripe drops Bitcoin, eyes Stellar, OmiseGO appeared first on NewsBTC.

Bart Chilton, the former CFTC commissioner, is now taking his regulatory expertise to decentralized cryptocurrency exchange Omega One.

It has not been a great start to the year for Ripple. The once shining star of the crypto world has lost over 60% of its value crashing from an all-time high of $3.90 on Jan 4 to $1.44 today. The San Francisco company is desperate for some good news and these new partners could well provide it.

It has been reported that the two partners are leading foreign exchange provider MercuryFX and publically traded telecommunications company IDT Corporation. Both firms are seeking to enhance customer experiences by providing low cost, real time transparent global payments. Using banks and forex providers for micropayments is currently cost prohibitive. Enter xRapid which aims to expedite international currency transfers by using Ripple’s XRP token as the intermediary.

Optimistic outlook

Both partners are optimistic about the future of remittances using cryptocurrency. The demand for cheaper and instant payments will grow as the market expands. Alfredo O’Hagan, Senior VP of IDT’s consumer payments business told media;

“Our BOSS Revolution international money transfer business routinely utilizes digital assets to generate liquidity in fiat currencies for our disbursement agents as part of our transaction settlement process. We’re excited to pilot Ripple’s xRapid solution for on-demand liquidity. We expect that xRapid will enable us to settle more transactions in real-time and at a lower cost.”

While MercuryFX CEO and founder Alastair Constance added;

“Ripple, XRP and fiat currency fit hand in glove. What we’re doing together is realizing one of the best use cases for frictionless transactions, which is international settlement. xRapid allows us to drive down the cost of currency exchange and global settlement, making our customers more competitive and saving them tens of millions of dollars each year. Digital assets promise fast transaction speeds but XRP is far faster than all of them, including bitcoin. Cutting settlement times from hours and days to just three seconds or less will remove billions of dollars in unnecessary intermediary fees,”

Rapid transfers

Ripple’s xRapid system is critical for the company, which has long been making the case that its digital currency, XRP, can provide useful liquidity in the global money system, and is not simply the object of speculation. Financial institutions can eliminate the need for costly arbitrators or pre-funded Nostro accounts in destination currencies.

Referring to the company’s long-term vision for moving money the same way information moves today Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, said;

“It’s no secret that XRP is faster and more efficient than bitcoin or any other digital asset. It settles in three seconds and at fractions of a penny. Payment providers like IDT Corporation and MercuryFX are early movers because they understand what XRP can do for their business and customer experience. We’re excited to have them at the forefront of the Internet of Value.”

Ripple currently sits third in the market capacity charts with $55.7 billion at the time of writing.

The post Two new partners for Ripple’s xRapid transfer project appeared first on NewsBTC.