The XRP token continues to confound critics, remaining in lockstep with most of the crypto market as Bitcoin rises and falls. While diversification is a strategy beloved of Wall St. investors, the fact that a token as loved – and almost equally unloved – as XRP can stick so close to the Mama Bear (or Papa Bull) suggests that at least in the current market, diversifying the portfolio is as unrealistic as ever.
It doesn’t appear to matter how much good news or bad news accompanies the controversial XRP token – other than brief forays into double-digits, it generally shows a desire to return to the fold within days. This week has seen some strong news for XRP but the overall pattern in the price looks remarkably similar to Bitcoin again.
XRP Moves to Web Monetization
Say what you like about Ripple as a central actor, but some XRP users are building their own applications for the protocol. Say hello to Coil, an XRP-based funding platform to replace advertisements with web monetization.
Although no one likes targeted ads, replacing them is easier said than done: no one’s going to use their credit card to send pennies. There are a few crypto projects on the job: Coinhive and Oyster are replacing ads with in-browser mining, and Brave uses automated payments.
Announced in a blog post earlier this week, Coil’s experimental browser extension provides micropayments in the third-largest cryptocurrency—which means that they’re not just targeting speculators. Instead of selling your details to the highest bidder, Coil pays each website, much like an XRP tip, in proportion to the time you spend on it.
With transaction costs measuring in millionths of an XRP, it would take a lot of surfing and video-watching before your fees reached a penny.
Someone Just Sent Billions of Dollars For Less Than A Penny
Speaking of fees, they’re definitely showing XRP’s value as a payment system. Two days ago an unknown big spender made two enormous transactions for a total of 6.7 billion XRP—at present, about $2.2 billion USD.
Transaction Type: Payment Amount: 2,139,999,979 XRP Fee: 12 drops (0.000012 XRP) Sender: rHYTJDFrbCU1i2yCENTg9yjUrHHGaYTB4D Sender Balance: 20.998428 Receiver: r93oSNBKuFjuKt8GxhF8VYaGzzwsNDPaX5 Receiver Balance: 2,140,000,078.993 Link: https://t.co/Fg6kbZ9nNS — XRPL Monitor (@XRPL_Monitor) August 28, 2018
It’s not clear what kind of transaction requires moving fifteen percent of the entire XRP supply. Maybe Binance bought a new Trezor; or perhaps Brad Garlinghouse is planning a Twitter giveaway.
Transaction Type: Payment Amount: 4,668,132,964 XRP Fee: 12 drops (0.000012 XRP) Sender: r9kkWNia8PmpR44L7mWZn33Hpff3CCzLjA Sender Balance: 20.980988 Receiver: rDbWJ9C7uExThZYAwV8m6LsZ5YSX3sa6US Receiver Balance: 4,668,133,063.993 Link: https://t.co/KenPZEeBZl — XRPL Monitor (@XRPL_Monitor) August 28, 2018
But the most impressive fact of the transactions is how inexpensive they were: each movement cost 12 drops. At a million drops per token, the XRP ledger has shown how well it can flex its muscles: it could conceivably move an entire country’s GDP for under a penny.
New Markets For International Remittance
Those sub-penny fees might prove useful for one of XRP’s biggest value propositions: efficient movements of cash without paperwork or hassle. While most of the crypto verse has been watching prices all month, Ripple Labs scored several major partnerships that are likely to put XRP to real-world use.
In a posting earlier this month, Ripple announced that US exchange Bittrex would be “the preferred digital asset exchange” for transactions in US Dollars. By linking the largest US Exchange into the xRapid network, the partnership allows payments to be “instantly converted into XRP,” which can then be moved without hassle.
The announcement also included bridges to Bitso, a Mexican crypto-exchange, and Coins.ph, the Coinbase of the Philippines. As the third and fourth-largest destinations for international remittances, the partnerships mark a major step towards abolishing cross-border transaction fees altogether.
The author has investments in XRP.
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