Ripple Price Surges 84% In A Day To New Record High. Is XRP The Next Crypto Rocket 'To The Moon'?

The increased activity in Bitcoin following Cboe launching bitcoin futures trading on Dec. 10, is generating more activity around the entire cryptocurrency world. As the #4 (and occasionally #5 when Litecoin surpassed it) cryptocurrency, of course Ripple has felt the, well, ripple effect. Another explanation is that as the Bitcoin craze cools off, more people are trading for Ripple—which some see as a more stable asset.

"I think that markets view XRP as a very stable digital asset, so they feel safe parking funds in XRP when they exit other assets. If someone wants to get out of BTC, but doesn't want to necessarily move into fiat, he or she moves the value into XRP," said Miguel Vias, head of XRP markets at Ripple in an interview with Coindesk. Especially as network speeds lag and transaction fees soar on Bitcoin, Ripple may be an appealing trading alternative with its super-fast speeds.

AMEX Partnership

Unlike many cryptocurrencies, whose ethos moves away from traditional banking and financial institutions, Ripple seeks to use the new technology to optimize how money is moved. To that end, a recently announced partnership with American Express could be driving buzz around XRP. Ripple will be working with AMEX to "solve liquidity shortfalls in remittances by offering instant blockchain-based payments."

"American Express has a long history of integrating new technologies…,” said American Express Chief Information Officer Marc Gordon, in a statement. “This collaboration with Ripple and Santander represents the next step forward on our blockchain journey, evolving the way we move money around the world.” Another explanation is that as the Bitcoin craze cools off, more people are trading for Ripple—which some see as a more stable asset.

"I think that markets view XRP as a very stable digital asset, so they feel safe parking funds in XRP when they exit other assets. If someone wants to get out of BTC, but doesn't want to necessarily move into fiat, he or she moves the value into XRP," said Miguel Vias, head of XRP markets at Ripple in an interview with Coindesk. Especially as network speeds lag and transaction fees soar on Bitcoin, Ripple may be an appealing trading alternative with its super-fast speeds.

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept
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David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

2018:
Another Growth Year for Blockchain

2017 was a year of tremendous growth for blockchain,

though not in the expected ways. At the beginning of this year, I and others predicted that 2017 would be the year that blockchain moved from proof-of-concepts into production. We did see some notable successes in this regard. Ripple became a fully operational platform with over 100 members and payment volumes in the billions, and industries began to form blockchain business networks, for example, the Digital Trade Chain consortium (DTC) in trade finance. But overall, I expected to see more "go lives" than we did. On the other hand, I don't think anyone expected the unprecedented growth in the market capitalization of cryptocurrencies or the related ICO boom.

So, what will the new year bring?

Despite the obvious perils in making predictions, I feel confident that, among other things, we will see

the following:

• Blockchain solutions will continue to come into production as the "low-hanging fruit" are addressed.
• Cryptocurrencies will continue to grow, fueled by traditional asset management players and techniques.
• Companies will focus on changing business models as blockchain begins to transform market structures.
• New ecosystems with smart contract technology will arise as integration platforms between existing industries.
• The ICO will become "professionalized" and morph into IPO 2.0.
• Scalability and performance of blockchains will become a critical issue, and there will be interesting new approaches
• People will increasingly recognize that local blockchain ecosystems are a critical success factor.

Now, let's unpack the details.

Low-hanging fruit

Although it was quieter than expected this year, I believe we will continue to see blockchain solutions come into production as enterprises address the "low-hanging fruit" by digitizing businesses and use cases where blockchain can make the most impact. In fintech, the two most promising use cases remain payments (where there are $50–60 billion of potential savings to be had) and trade finance (which stands to save some $15 billion).

As we saw payments do in 2017, I expect we will see trade finance begin to go live on blockchain in 2018. In payments, momentum will pick up and volumes will increase as larger banks, including correspondent banks, get into the act. These players will be tempted by the advantages blockchain brings in terms of real-time processing, lower risk profiles, lower costs and transparency. Blockchain can serve as a stick as well as a carrot, simply by proving that there are better alternatives to the status quo in many industries. We can imagine, as an example, that blockchain has had a hand to play in the European Banking Authority's EU-wide transparency exercises.

We were all somewhat surprised – if pleasantly so – by how well cryptocurrencies did in 2017 as a speculative asset. Indeed, growth was spectacular, with the asset class rising from $14 billion in December 2016 to over $450 billion in December 2017 in terms of market capitalization. I think this growth will continue to be fueled by traditional asset management approaches, including bitcoin futures, crypto hedge funds and the like, all of which will increase the demand for cryptocurrencies and tokens.

New business models

As blockchain continues to change market structures, companies will increasingly focus on changing business models. In a world where middlemen are becoming obsolete, companies will have to learn to stop thinking in silos and be more open to becoming partners in ecosystems or on broader platforms. That, in turn, means deciding what kinds of business models they want – whether it's platform plays, product plays, omni-channel strategies, and so on. These discussions will become multi-dimensional, encompassing both existing services and, increasingly, the new kinds of services that blockchain enables – particularly as blockchain combines with IoT and AI to create new kinds of marketplaces where industry silos come down in favor of broad, horizontal structures.

One of the most satisfying parts of 2017 for me was being able to see this start to happen close-hand among some of the companies I have the privilege to work with. Deon Digital has partnered with Mercedes Benz to develop a new operating system that will help break down silos in the mobility space. Skycell is a good example of IoT and blockchain opening up the pharmaceutical supply chain to embrace payments, invoicing and insurance. TEND is rethinking investment management by creating a Sharing Economy 2.0 for high-value assets.

One space I think we should keep a particular eye on in 2018 is the fund industry, where firms like Melonport are using blockchain to rethink asset management. I think we will see more of this, and that the fund industry will start to be significantly disrupted next year. This will start with the management of crypto assets, but over time we will see traditional assets increasingly being tokenized, migrated onto blockchains and managed on-chain.

The morphing of ICOs

With startups raising over $3.5 billion in ICOs, 2017 was clearly the year of the token launch. To me, though, the ICO boom is significant, not necessarily because of the amounts raised, but because we are seeing the beginnings of the democratization of venture capital. And though the concept had a great 2017, change will come to the world of ICOs in 2018 as more traditional players get involved.

Over the next 12-18 months, I expect people with experience and expertise in the IPO world will embrace tokenization as a technical platform, and the whole business will be professionalized, with book building, pricing, startup evaluation and so on happening more along traditional lines. As we've already begun to see, it will be harder to get funding simply on the back of a white paper. Investors will demand sound business plans and high levels of transparency, with all that entails.

Scalability and ecosystems

One of the key challenges of existing blockchain technology is scale and performance. I predict that next year we will see alternatives to current blockchain technologies that will be more scalable, faster and minimize energy consumption. IOTA, which has gained a lot of traction lately, is, I think, a project to watch in this regard. I also believe people will increasingly find that local blockchain ecosystems, where critical services are co-located in one geographical area, are critical success factors for blockchain projects. This is certainly what we see in the "Crypto Valley" in Switzerland. As the President of the Crypto Valley Association, I hope readers will forgive me for predicting – or at the least, pitching for – the continued success of Switzerland as a blockchain ecosystem.

Crypto Valley has a high concentration of all the services blockchain projects will need to raise money and set up shop, including legal, advisory, tax, accounting, smart contract platforms, KYC/AML utilities and marketing expertise. This coupled with Switzerland’s other advantages, from its state-of-the-art infrastructure to its highly skilled workforce, will, in my opinion, mean it should remain a great draw for blockchain companies – in the new year and hopefully for many years to come.

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.
Interested or have Questions. Call me 559-474-4614

 

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Blockchain's Big Year:
Competitive Job Market Grows
More Than 200%

The number of blockchain jobs posted in the U.S.

this year has seen a dramatic increase, according to data provided to CoinDesk from one of the largest jobs sites. The just-published statistics from Indeed.com indicate that, since last December, that number has increased by 207 percent. Even more dramatically, the number of blockchain jobs has increased 631 percent since November 2015. Showing how hot cryptocurrency has become this year after being generally overshadowed by blockchain in 2016, 15 out of the 18 most popular industry jobs specifically mentioned "cryptocurrency" in the description.

Moreover, when seen as a percentage of the site's total number of job postings, the blockchain industry overall increased from only a few jobs per million to roughly 30 jobs per million, showing a slight increase relative to the overall available positions on the site. While many industry observers likely didn't need the numbers to know the blockchain industry has grown massively over the course of the last year, the quantification is interesting, especially as it relates to the divergence in the number of jobs searched compared to the number of jobs posted.

At the beginning of this year, the number of jobs searched neared parity with number of jobs posted, at about 20 searches each per million, according to the chart below, also provided by Indeed. Then, over the course of this year, the frequency of blockchain jobs searched increased by five times to almost 100 blockchain jobs searches per million. This combination of explosive blockchain jobs growth and the interest of jobs seekers has created a tumultuous environment, where the leading employers are duking it out over top-notch talent.

Vice president of product at Indeed.com, Terence Chiu said:

"While the number of opportunities and searches are still quite small, Indeed data shows that companies are increasingly seeking experts to focus on this new technology – and job seekers have been quick to react."
 

Not just technicians

While nearly all the jobs on Indeed.com were technical in nature, not all employers are after developers or engineers. This year also marked the birth of the Crypto Jobs List website, dedicated exclusively to crypto industry jobs. Launching in September with the promise to not scrape job postings from other sites, and instead only to publish original opportunities, the site has discovered a niche in the non-technical side of the industry.

With an average of two job postings per day, the site has listed 90 blockchain jobs so far, with about 20 more currently being "curated" for possible inclusion. Among those that have been posted are positions for writers, traders, marketers and lawyers. The site's founder and director of growth, Raman Shalupau, described the diverse demand,

saying:

"Even though demand for Solidity smart contracts engineers and core engineers is through the roof, there are plenty positions that are accessible for non-technical people."

As an example of this diversity, one of the largest industry employers, Deloitte, currently employs about 800 people across its various blockchain efforts, but only 400 of those are either blockchain developers or architects, according to numbers provided to CoinDesk. The other half of those jobs include positions such as business analysts, strategy and technology consultants, and tax and accounting experts. An estimated 75 percent of all blockchain jobs result from cross-training existing employees – an increasingly popular trend, according to Eric Piscini, a Deloitte principal who oversees much of the firm's blockchain work.

"Every morning when I wake up the first thing I think about is, where can I find more people to join the team?" he said. In addition to cross-training employees, Deloitte hires many of its staff from educational institutions and is one of the largest posters of jobs in the provided Indeed.com data.

The top employers

But it's not just the types of opportunities that differ greatly from job site to job site. It's also the types of employers. On Crypto Jobs List, the top three biggest blockchain employers are interoperable smart contracts startup Wanchain, ethereum client software startup Parity Technologies and asset management startup Cindicator. On the flip side, Indeed.com appears more attractive to legacy firms, with industry mainstays like Deloitte and JPMorgan, as well as interesting newbies including eBay, ESPN and Uber using the premium Indeed Prime service to actively seek out candidates. CoinDesk also reached out to several other large blockchain companies to get an idea of how employment numbers have changed.

Distributed ledger consortium R3, which earlier this year raised $107 million in venture capital, has grown its staff from 30 in early 2016, to 90 at the beginning of 2017, and as high as 150 today, according to the consortium's head of global talent, Simon Clarke. Clarke said R3 has had to become more competitive with its compensation packages, while focusing on creating a culture that encourages employees to stick around. "It's no secret that blockchain expertise is in huge demand right now," said Clarke. "Firms are fighting to hire the best talent, and candidates are able to be incredibly picky about the role they ultimately choose."

Computing giant IBM said that other large enterprises aren't the biggest threat in attracting talent. According to the firm's vice president of people and culture, Mike Schade, it's rather the blockchain startups that are most attractive to job seekers. Since the beginning of the year, IBM has grown the number of blockchain-focused employees it has from 400 to 1,500, primarily by giving those employees access to its biggest clients (whereas startups generally offer equity in the company). Yet, if that doesn't work, Schade said the tech giant works to keep friendly relations with even former blockchain employees, in case the startup life doesn't work out. "We keep in touch with them closely,"

A new kind of employee

Beyond just changing the relationship these companies keep with former employees, blockchain technology is also changing the nature of employment itself, according to Andrew Keys, an early employee of ethereum startup incubator ConsenSys. Formerly the head of global business development for the firm, Keys is himself as an example of the evolving arrangements that are helping change what it means to be an employee. Keys is now the co-founder of ConsenSys Capital, which is just one of more than 25 so-called "spokes" of ConsenSys as a larger company. Each spoke has its own founder, who interacts with the corporate hub in his or her own way.

But along with their job titles, Keys and other employees identify as "members" of ConsenSys, an allusion to their varying vested interests in the company's success. The company, which grew from about 100 employees in January to about 470 today, offers a spectrum of compensation arrangements, including varying degrees of equity, salary, token distribution arrangements and other affiliations. "We're blurring the lines of what employer-employee relationships are," Keys told CoinDesk.

Threat to jobs?

In the end, though, the total number of blockchain jobs in the economy will likely be more difficult to calculate than any other profession, as will their impact on other jobs. While jobs numbers are always an estimate, blockchain roles in particular will likely always be tough to quantify due to the pseudonymous or anonymous nature of many in the industry. That's not the only reason why the impact of blockchain on the jobs market could prove difficult to calculate, though. The often touted "increased efficiency" achieved by a shared, distributed ledger has increasingly become a widely used euphemism for cutting jobs.

Earlier this year, Digital Asset Holdings founder Blythe Masters warned that there was no guarantee blockchain would be a net win for the jobs industry. Echoing that sentiment is Mizuho Bank senior digital strategist working with blockchain, Ikuma Ueno. Following an address Ueno gave at banking conference Sibos earlier this year, he argued in interview with CoinDesk that employers might eventually have a responsibility to retrain the employees that blockchain makes irrelevant – if they can. "It's always hard to tear off the people who have been dedicated to that service for 25 or 30 years, and then tell them to do sales. It's not going to work," he said,

concluding:

"But that must be taken into consideration when you are trying to do new approaches."

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.
Interested or have Questions. Call me 559-474-4614

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Cryptocurrency scams doubled from 2016.

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Zcash Sets Roadmap for Blockchain

The zcash development team is planning a series of network upgrades

for next year, according to a roadmap published today. Writing on the zcash blog, co-founder Zooko Wilcox and CTO Nathan Wilcox detailed two milestone upgrades – "Overwinter" and "Sapling" – the latter of which was discussed in a roadmap update earlier this year. According to the post, the goal of next year's upgrades is to "further upgrade zcash's performance, security, and usability."

The first update, Overwinter, is scheduled to go live in June 2018. Per the post, that upgrade is focused on "making itself and future network upgrades safer for users, even in the case of governance contention." Though light on detail at present, the Wilcoxes said that future details about the update would be released in a future blog post. The second one, set to take place in September, is centered around its "Sapling" protocol, which is aimed at boosting the capability of the cryptocurrency's privacy-oriented shielded transactions.

The two wrote:

"Sapling will activate the Sapling protocol update, bringing orders of magnitude improvements in both time and memory to shielded transactions, making mobile wallet support feasible. Additionally, Sapling will rely on the Powers of Tau open-participation parameter setup, largely mitigating concerns about the parameter setup risks for zkSNARK applications (including other applications outside of Zcash)."

The post concludes by suggesting that other upgrades may be in the offing, including functionality for smart contracts and research into the proof-of-stake algorithm. "Possibilities include scalability improvements to allow practically unlimited numbers of transactions, novel consensus algorithms such as Proof-of-Stake, and private and scalable smart contracts," they wrote.

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.
Interested or have Questions. Call me 559-474-4614

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Apple Patent Filing Hints
at Blockchain Use

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Australia's CommBank Plans to Issue a Bond on the Blockchain

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia has revealed a plan

to issue a bond over a blockchain system, possibly as soon as next year. Though few details were revealed, Sophie Gilder, CommBank's head of blockchain, said that the bond would be transferred and paid for over a blockchain-based system in collaboration with an unnamed major world issuer, according to ZDNet report.

In comments made during the GMIC Sydney conference Tuesday, Gilder said that bank has been exploring blockchain use cases for more than four years and has completed 25 proofs-of-concept and trials aimed to address real-world business issues. CommBank, she continued, is eyeing the technology for equities, bonds, syndicated loans and other applications where it considers there are high levels of "friction."

Gilder stated:

"We think the platform we have built can make this more efficient."

Earlier this year, as reported by CoinDesk, CommBank announced that it is developing a blockchain-based system for the sale of government bonds. The concept was tested by the Queensland Treasury Corporation, which acts as the Australian state’s central financing authority. Other institutions are also moving to adopt blockchain technology for bond issuance.

This October, Russia's National Securities Depository said it had issued its first-ever live bond using blockchain. The financial instrument, a $10-million bond for shares in Russian telecom giant MegaFon, used smart contracts and the open-source Hyperledger Fabric blockchain. And, in late 2016, French bank BNP also announced that it was exploring the technology for use in distributing instruments known as "mini-bonds."

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.
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David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

How Blockchain Is Restoring Value And Transparency In Online Search

For businesses — even those with big budgets — the situation is perhaps bleaker.

For every dollar of digital advertising spent last year, $0.40 went to Google and $0.37 went to Facebook. Literally, every other participant on the world’s most ubiquitous online social channels (think: Snapchat, Twitter, Amazon) battle for leftovers. The utter non-competitiveness does little to promote transparency and innovation or return control to advertisers and consumers. Jeremy Epstein, CEO of the blockchain marketing company Never Stop Marketing, recalls the conversation he had with Stacy Huggins, CMO of MadHive. According to her, for every $1 you invest in digital advertising, you only get $.44 of value.

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Feds shut down allegedly fraudulent cryptocurrency offering

Cryptocurrency offerings are no longer a regulation-free zone.

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Revolut merges mobile banking with cryptocurrency trading

Revolut is merging traditional banking and cryptocurrency

to let you buy, sell, trade, and hold Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ether alongside 25 world fiat currencies. The $90 million-funded mobile banking startup is trying to erase the divide between old and new money. Revolut‘s CEO Nikolay Storonsky announced on stage today at TechCrunch’s Disrupt Berlin conference that cryptocurrency trading will open to all Revolut users on Thursday. If you’re spending money through Revolut’s debit card and run out of fiat currency, it will automatically convert the necessary amount of cryptocurrency to fiat to fund your transaction.

“Despite being one of the hottest trends in the world right now, getting exposure to cryptocurrency has notoriously been time-consuming and expensive,” Storonsky writes. The move comes as cryptocurrency becomes increasingly legitimate in the eyes of the world, following bitcoin blowing past $10,000 per coin, and traditional futures exchanges preparing to allow bitcoin futures trading this month. While cryptocurrency could be seen as a niche distraction from Revolut’s core business, but Storonsky feels that crypto is going mainstream and will quickly become a critical part of all banking. He cited that during Revolut’s week-long crypto beta test, 10,000 customers traded $1 million in cryptocurrency.

When the feature opens up to all users Thursday, Revolut promises to offer the most competitive rates on crypto transactions, charging only a flat, up-front 1.5 percent without other hidden fees that can add up to 5 percent to 9 percent on other platforms. Customers will be able to buy through all of Revolut’s base currencies so there’s no need for extra foreign exchange fees if you want to buy in Swiss Francs, for example.

In just two years, Revolut has signed up over 1,000,000 users in Europe and processed 42 million transactions, and claims to have saved customers $160 million in foreign exchange fees. It’s growing fast, doubling the rate of new customer sign-ups versus three months ago. While there are plenty of players in the modernized debit card market like N26 and Monzo, Revolut also lets you send up to €5,000 per month in 16 currencies without any fee. As these startups jockey for position, they’re all searching for differentiators. Embracing cryptocurrency could lure fintech early adopters to Revolut.

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.
Interested or have Questions. Call me 559-474-461

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden