Blockchain Consultants

Blockchain Transformations Done Here

post

A 3-Year in Ripple Price, Seeing a 55% Surge

by

A 3-Year in Ripple Price, Seeing a 55% Surge

According to the latest announcement, the XRP price surges 55%, as the sixth-ranked cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has renewed its aim on the creation of a cross-border payment network. 

It was announced that in January 2021, XRP cryptocurrency hit a value of more than 0.40 US dollars per coin, more than double what it was in December 2020. Over the past year, Ripple’s value has been below a dollar, indicating little or even no signs of improvement.

The uptick in trading volume was seen when XRP renewed its center on the creation of a cross-border payment network that is inclusive and sustainable as well. 

XRP, which stands for ExpandThe Ripple coin, is a currency on the Ripple network. It is best known for its digital payment network and protocol, and it can be used by banks to source liquidity on-demand in real-time, as well as by payment providers to extend their scope into new markets. It facilitates faster payment settlements and lower foreign exchange costs.

Factors That Surged XRP Price

According to Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView, XRP dropped to a low of $0.566 in the early hours on April 4. But after Ripple posted a blog titled “Creating a More Financially Inclusive and Sustainable Future,” it triggered a 55% rally in XRP price.

A blog titled “Creating a More Financially Inclusive and Sustainable Future” discussed how XRP has collaborated with “mission-driven financial technology corporations, reputed universities, NGOs, social entrepreneurs, and others in order to create higher economic fairness and opportunity for all, and this post has triggered XRP price to a great extent.

Another factor that triggered its price was when Ripple announced that it acquired a 40% stake in Asia’s leading cross-border payments specialist, Tranglo. 

The cumulative impact of these two recent announcements has resulted in a 257 percent surge in XRP trading activity over the last two days, from an average 24-hour volume of $5 billion on April 4, 2021, to $18.4 billion on April 5. 

To get instant updates about Blockchain Technology and to learn more about online Blockchain Certifications, check out Blockchain Council. 

A 3-Year in Ripple Price, Seeing a 55% Surge

Source

Former Chainalysis brass is now FinCEN’s acting director

by

The current acting director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, will bid farewell to the governing body in April. His replacement: Michael Mosier, Chainalysis’ former chief technical counsel. 

“Director Kenneth A. Blanco today announced several leadership changes impacting the bureau,” said a public statement from FinCEN on Friday, adding:

“Director Blanco announced he will depart FinCEN on April 9, after serving as the organization’s director since December 2017. Michael Mosier, former FinCEN Deputy Director and current Counselor to the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, will return to FinCEN as Acting Director.”

Blanco was the government agency’s eighth director. AnnaLou Tirol, FinCEN’s deputy director, worked as the agency’s associate director of its Strategic Operations Division in the past, the statement said. Mosier takes his post as acting director on April 11.

This is not the first crypto-experienced hire by a government agency. President Biden chose Gary Gensler as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC. Gensler is well-educated on the crypto industry as he taught an in-depth course on the subject at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, in 2018.

After Mosier’s work for Chainalysis, he spent time working for FinCEN in other capacities, as well as for the U.S. Department of Justice and multiple other U.S. government positions.

“I am proud to have led an incredible organization with an important national security mission that has a profound effect on the lives of so many people, especially the most vulnerable in our society,” Blanco said in the statement upon his exit. “I have every confidence in Mr. Mosier and Ms. Tirol’s ability to lead the bureau forward and continue the progress of ensuring our national security and protecting people from harm.”

U.S. government agencies have become increasingly involved in the crypto industry over time.

Former Chainalysis brass is now FinCEN’s acting director

Source

Litecoin Price Prediction: LTC/USD Rise Steadily, Price Spikes above $200 Resistance

by

LTC Price Prediction – April 4

The Litecoin price may likely settle above the 9-day and 21-day moving averages as the RSI (14) moves toward 60-level.

LTC/USD Market

Key Levels:

Resistance levels: $225, $235, $245

Support levels: $175, $165, $155

LTCUSD – Daily Chart

LTC/USD is currently trading above the 9-day and 21-day moving averages within the channel. However, the cryptocurrency has been following an uptrend for the past few days, and should the buyers keep it above the moving averages, the coin might remain at the upside. Today, an early trading session touches the $204.89 level before rebounding to where it is trading currently at $204.29.

What is the Next Direction for Litecoin?

The Litecoin price remains firm above the moving averages and if the resistance of $205 gives way, the bull-run may come to focus. At the moment, the bullish scenario seems more dominant as buyers continue to post firm commitments into the market. For the past few days, we could see a sharp rise in the market price. Moreover, if the coin stays above the $200 resistance level, this could further strengthen the market to $225, $235, and $240 resistance levels.

On the downside, a lower possible swing may likely retest the previous support below the moving averages. However, if the bears manage to fuel the market, traders may expect a further drop to $175, $165, and $155 support levels. On the other hand, the technical indicator RSI (14) is now moving towards 60-level, indicating that the market may retain the bullish trend.

Comparing with Bitcoin, the Litecoin price crosses above the moving averages in other to reach the resistance level of 3455 SAT. More so, this resistance level is expected to effectively exceed so that the market price may end up closing above it, there might not be any reason to expect the long-term bullish reversal.

LTCBTC – Daily Chart

On the other hand, if the price trades below the lower boundary of the channel, it could refresh lows under 3300 SAT and a possible bearish continuation may likely meet the major support at 3200 SAT before falling to 3100 SAT and below while the buyers may push the coin to the potential resistance at 3800 SAT and above. To support the bullish movement, the technical indicator RSI (14) is moving toward the north to give more bullish signals.

Litecoin Price Prediction: LTC/USD Rise Steadily, Price Spikes above $200 Resistance

Source

UNI rises by 50% Surge To Become 8th Largest Ethereum-Based Asset

by

The native token of decentralized exchange Uniswap (UNI) has increased by up to 50% within the past week. This upsurge has pushed UNI into the top ten crypto assets by market capitalization. Speculation bids for the much-expected V3 overhaul are high, and it has helped UNI to maintain the 8th position in the market.

Within 24 hours, UNI has increased its market cap to $17.52 billion from its previous value of $8.8 billion on March 4.

UNI now the second-largest Ethereum-based asset

Based on the current ranking system of Messari, UNI is now the second-largest Ethereum-based asset by market capitalization, only behind Tether.

UNI’s market cap is now bigger than Ripple’s (XRP) market cap ($17.19 billion) as well as Litecoin’s (LTC) market cap ($13.0 billion)

The token entered the top ten on Friday, which makes it the first DeFi DApp native token to do so.

Yesterday, it is price hit an all-time high of $34, but as of the time of writing, UNI was trading at $33 per token. It’s expected to rise further as speculation transactions grow.

The initial token distribution of UNI tokens was airdropped to liquidity providers added to the 400 tokens distributed to every wallet with DEX in September last year.

Hashmasks Sells 16,000 NFTs Related to Artwork for $9 Million

The grand entrance of UNI into the top ten crypto assets is coming after the token recorded an all-time monthly trade volume. In February alone, the record was broken three times, which culminated in a monthly all-time high of $31.9 billion.

But it seems the massive stride in trade volume has come to an end, as trading volume reduced slightly within the past few days. However, even with the drop in volume, UNI still represents 50% of all trades on Ethereum-powered DEXs.

UNI’s surge attributed to several factors

The growth of UNI is also coming at a time when there is increased speculation about the upcoming V3 upgrade. Developer of Yearn Finance Andre Cronje recently stated that there has been increased social media activity by Hayden Adams, Uniswap’s lead developer. According to him, it suggests that the V3 launch is very close.

Cronje created the post after Adams opened a Twitter poll asking followers where they are looking to get the details about the Uniswap V3 launch.

UNI’s impressive rise is a result of several factors, as experts have observed. In particular, the record-breaking figures in trading volume contributed massively to the token’s rise. The surge was also caused by speculation regarding the V3 launch.

UNI rises by 50% Surge To Become 8th Largest Ethereum-Based Asset

Source

JPMorgan’s Career Pages Brings Up Blockchain Job Positions

by

According to the latest announcement, JPMorgan’s career pages post several jobs for Blockchain enthusiasts.

It was noted that it bought 56 open positions, with 34 including the tech in the job title.

Last year, JPMorgan continued on a Blockchain rampage by bringing multiple jobs to the industry. At that time, Indeed.com reported JPMorgan Chase as the only financial firm in the top 10 companies posting jobs related to Blockchain, cryptocurrency, and Bitcoin. 

The report mentions that most job openings posted this year are spread across the U.S., India, and Singapore, indicating that technology holds a futuristic career all across the globe. Talking about job openings, many of the jobs relate to Onyx, the division created to oversee JPM Coin, the bank’s wholesale payments token. 

JPMorgan is a U.S. multinational investment bank and financial services holding company headquartered in New York, serving corporations and individuals in more than 100 countries.

JPMorgan is Continuing on a Blockchain Rampage

As U.S. mega-bank JPMorgan posted about Blockchain job positions, the report mentions that most Blockchain engineer roles are focused on integrating JPM Coin and Liink into JPMorgan’s payments architecture.

Last year in October, JPMorgan rebranded the Liink banking network, which is based on a fork of Ethereum. At the time of rebranding, it was noted that Liink invites its 400-plus financial institutions to start building on top of the platform. 

Apart from JPMorgan, several other big banks are making a lot of noise in the cryptocurrency space, focussing on areas such as crypto custody and potentially trading digital assets. Reports also highlight that in contrast to JPMorgan’s career page, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have only two blockchain job openings, whereas NY Mellon has four job positions. 

Specifically talking about JPMorgan jobs, the report mentions that 13 jobs related to Onyx and Link, majorly based in the U.S. Apart from this, there are also active positions for a marketing manager for Liink and blockchain adjacent positions in commercial real estate, the report reads.

As the bank sees blockchain technology as a viable solution, recently, it was announced that JP Morgan had tested a transaction of Blockchain in space. It was further noted that the Blockchain transaction testing was carried out by a Danish space firm named GomSpace’s satellites.

Blockchain space is booming, if you are interested in mastering the core concepts of Blockchain and becoming a Certified Blockchain Expert, you can get enrolled to Blockchain Council. 

To get instant updates about Blockchain Technology and to learn more about online blockchain certifications, check out Blockchain Council.

JPMorgan’s Career Pages Brings Up Blockchain Job Positions

Source

Enterprise meets DeFi: Organizations work toward adopting blockchain tech

by

Decentralized finance is quickly maturing. While the total value locked in DeFi is over $45 billion, financial institutions and large corporations are starting to implement DeFi concepts to automate business processes. This is known as “enterprise DeFi.”

For instance, invoices and other financial products can be tokenized to ensure that transactions are valid and should be processed for payment across multiple parties. Coke One North America is one of the first large corporations to demonstrate this.

CONA is leveraging the Baseline Protocol — a project that coordinates confidential workflows between enterprises using messaging, zero-knowledge cryptography and blockchain — to tokenize invoices. CONA aims to “baseline” its entire supply chain by giving internal bottlers and external suppliers access to a private, distributed integration network.

Through use cases like CONA, such solutions are quickly gaining traction. There are also a number of vendors entering this infrastructure market including Provide, an enterprise middleware provider, and Big Four firm Ernst & Young. Most recently, ConsenSys — one of the leading blockchain software companies — announced plans to use Baseline Protocol as a solution for its enterprise clients, further demonstrating the importance of enterprise DeFi adoption.

How ConsenSys plans to drive enterprise DeFi

Specifically, ConsenSys Codefi — ConsenSys’ fintech suite that connects financial use cases to blockchain counterparts — will soon offer a baseline-compliant solution for its enterprise clients.

Didier Le Floch, institutional products and engineering lead at ConsenSys Codefi, told Cointelegraph that while the Baseline Protocol was developed by EY, ConsenSys and Microsoft, Codefi has been taking steps to ensure that its products will eventually be fully compatible with it:

“We want to enable the use of digital assets and the financing of those assets for payment use cases. These use cases will generate maximum business value, combining automation of business processes and payments using things like stablecoins, for example.”

In order to achieve this, Floch explained that the Codefi tech stack will be combined with the Baseline Protocol to deliver an effortless user experience for cases such as financing supply chains. Floch remarked that this is a first step in the right direction, as Codefi strongly believes that the enterprise sector will soon converge with the DeFi market: “There will be ebbs and flows, and it will be a journey with various steps, but we’ve already seen the promise of this convergence in the DeFi market.”

To his point, MakerDAO — the protocol behind the stablecoin Dai — announced support in June 2020 to use non-crypto-native assets, such as invoices and music streaming royalties, as collateral for its Dai stablecoin. Maker also voted to support a protocol from blockchain startup Centrifuge to bring real-world assets on its platform. Known as “Centrifuge Chain,” this is built on Parity’s blockchain development framework, Substrate.

Asset originators can use the Centrifuge Chain to mint nonfungible tokens of real-world assets, converting them to ERC-721 tokens. These assets can then be added to Tinlake, which is Centrifuge’s Ethereum-based DeFi protocol for decentralized asset financing.

A Centrifuge spokesperson told Cointelegraph that the company is currently working with MakerDAO to bring New Silver, an online real-estate lender, on to the Maker platform as an asset originator. As such, NewSilver would be the first asset originator using Tinlake to get to the MakerDAO executive vote, ultimately allowing asset originators to generate Dai as a credit facility.

DeFi protocol Aave also introduced a diversified money market to support real-world assets back in October 2020. According to the Aave blog post, this money market would make it easy for the Aave community to onboard real-world assets into the protocol, allowing investors to lend against assets, such as invoices, real estate and inventory finance. “Right now, it’s at a small scale, but there are DeFi lending protocols already taking steps to incorporate real-world assets into their protocols,” said Floch.

Breaking down barriers hampering adoption

Many enterprise DeFi concepts are still in early development, as a number of barriers exist. For instance, there are concerns regarding publicly available sources to determine the price of collateralized assets. Furthermore, many DeFi protocols venturing into the enterprise space only allow solutions for borrowing in crypto, which may be unappealing to mainstream organizations. Moreover, paying transaction fees in cryptocurrency may also be problematic for enterprises that typically deal in fiat payments.

Floch explained that Codefi’s use of Baseline Protocol is intended to address these concerns. For example, he noted that there will be an “Infura ITX” integration that will enable corporations to pay gas fees in dollars rather than Ether (ETH) when using the Baseline Protocol. Since the platform leverages the Ethereum network as its mainnet of choice, or as a common frame of reference for complex workflows, this integration will ensure a better user experience overall.

In addition, Floch mentioned that ConsenSys’ open-source zero-knowledge proof library, known as “gnark,” will be leveraged to ensure enterprise data remains private, yet verifiable.

While notable, Codefi’s implementation of the Baseline Protocol isn’t the only solution intended to solve the challenges related to enterprise DeFi adoption.

For example, EY has been heavily involved in the blockchain space, specifically in terms of enterprise DeFi development. Paul Brody, global blockchain lead at EY, told Cointelegraph that the firm has been working on DeFi enabling solutions since 2016, with the goal of making the inputs and outputs of enterprise business processes tokenized and then transactable:

“This means purchase orders, invoices, receivables, inventory — everything in traditional business-to-business processes should be ready to integrate into a DeFi ecosystem.”

Of course, Brody is aware of the challenges regarding this vision, noting that the first element to be tackled is achieving an acceptable level of privacy for enterprise users. Once this is accomplished, Brody explained that necessary standards need to be established where bodies, such as the Enterprise Ethereum Association, can be key partners in the pursuit of these goals.

Brody further mentioned that as an industry auditor, EY will not be offering financial services involving DeFi. Rather, the firm is devoted to ensuring that enterprise clients will be able to plug their business operations into existing DeFi solutions. For example, Brody explained that EY’s Network Procurement solution is designed to manage purchase orders and fulfillment, which would allow enterprises to exchange tokens for purchase orders, contracts, invoices and inventory transfers. “As soon as we see standards we can leverage, we hope that our enterprise users will be able to take advantage of these markets,” said Brody.

Institutions show interest in DeFi?

In addition to a growing number of enterprise DeFi solutions in development, there is now interest in DeFi from large organizations and financial institutions. This was recently demonstrated by the leading digital currency asset manager, Grayscale. On Feb. 26, 2021, the firm announced consideration to offer investors access to DeFi assets, including Aave, Compound’s COMP, MakerDAO’s MKR, Reserve Rights (RSR), SushiSwap’s SUSHI, Synthetix Network Token (SNX), Uniswap’s UNI and Yearn.finance’s YFI.

Although this is separate from enterprises using DeFi protocols to find real-world assets, Floch noted that this demonstrates more institutional players are ready to invest in prominent DeFi protocols:

“For institutional customers of Grayscale to start investing in those tokens is definitely a sign that they’re getting more comfortable with Defi, while understanding the value of those protocols (asset management, collateralized lending and trading automated in smart contracts).”

Enterprise meets DeFi: Organizations work toward adopting blockchain tech

Source