A WEB 3.0 BLOG

The  Financial Times defines liquidity  within a transaction as how easy it is to perform an exchange in a particular security or instrument, or the ease of converting an instrument into cash for withdrawal. This takes into account the stability and price of each instrument over the course of a transaction. If a financial transaction is an engine with moving parts and multiple factors that impact its performance, then liquidity is the oil that makes it move. Good, clean oil in the form of cheap and readily available liquidity means less risk and a faster, smoother transaction. For routine domestic transactions like a debit card purchase or paper check deposit, liquidity is generally high because financial exchanges normally execute in a single currency and are approved against account balances held by each party in the transaction. But when you assess liquidity for international or cross-border transactions, the oil begins to thin and performance breaks down. I...

The Promise of Enterprise Use Cases Digital assets have been a promising technology breakthrough, showing the potential to transform many sectors of the global economy. Consumers initially adopted the technology as a currency. Yet, similar to other breakthroughs like the internet, the initial use case is not indicative of the technology’s ultimate potential. A variety of use cases emerge as a technology matures. This paper highlights a novel enterprise use case for digital assets and provides policy recommendations. Enterprise Use Case: Liquidity Tool for Financial Institutions Enterprise-focused use cases for digital assets have come forth and are gaining traction. Financial institutions are beginning to leverage digital assets to source liquidity for global payments more efficiently than has ever been possible. Liquidity is one of the most critical, yet costly aspects of cross-border payments reach. Until now, liquidity was sourced by pre-funding accounts in foreign...

World governments are slowly realizing that cryptocurrencies have come to stay. They are being discussed in   G20 meetings , the United States has been taking every necessary measure in order to regulate and tax cryptocurrencies and, late last year, we even saw the   first regulated ICO   in Canada. It seems progression is being made towards adoption and there are already plans to create the first ever national cryptocurrency. Dubai, the largest and most wealthy city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has   plans for issuing emCash , a cryptocurrency that would have become the first ever to be backed by a state or government. However, it seems they were beaten by the punch… El Petro Venezuela will become the first country to have its own national cryptocurrency, the Petro (PTR). The project is backed the president Nicolas Maduro and, according to the   whitepaper , the original idea came from the previous president, Hugo Chavez. He wanted a “strong cur...

Over $6.2 mln (662.4 mln yen) of cryptocurrency was lost in 2017 due to fraud and theft, according to statistics released from  Japan’s  National Police Agency (NPA), local news outlet  Nikkei  reports today, March 22. This number does not include the over $500 mln hack of  NEM  from Japanese crypto exchange  Coincheck  in late January. Nikkei writes that 16 virtual currency exchanges and 3 companies with crypto wallets -- not noting any by name -- were the victims of all of the 2017 recorded crypto hacks, according to the NPA. Out of the 149 cases of “unauthorized access” to crypto accounts, in about 80 percent of cases (122 cases) the wallets did not use “two-factor authentication,” only using ID and password, Nikkei reports. The currencies that make up the largest percentage of the hack are  Bitcoin (BTC) (85 BTC lost),  Ripple  (XRP) (55 XRP), with 13 other  altcoins  included as well. By NPA data, the ...

It was standing room only inside the  Money20/20 Asia  fireside chat “A New Payments System for the Digital Age” — as Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse shared the stage with panel chair  Faisal Khan  — and outlined his vision for the future of Ripple,  XRP  and the  Internet of Value . Seats filled quickly in the lead up to the event as the room buzzed with conference goers waiting for Garlinghouse to take the stage. Prior to Garlinghouse’s appearance,  Dilip Ratha  the World Bank’s lead economist for migration and remittances, spoke about worldwide remittance trends and provided some insightful takeaways about the future of their costs. Ratha stated that a critical  sustainable development goal of the World Bank  is to lower the cost of remittances globally from 7 percent to 3 percent by 2030. When Garlinghouse took the stage, he immediately connected these statistics back to Ripple’s goal of establishing an Internet of V...

Ripple , the U.S. digital payments company, is working with 61 Japanese banks on an application that will enable customers to settle cash transfers instantly around the clock, the latest effort to apply blockchain technology in finance. The mobile app will allow users to send funds to other bank accounts in the country, Ripple said in a statement Wednesday. Beta testing will start next month and three of the lenders -- SBI Sumishin Net Bank Ltd., Suruga Bank Ltd. and  Resona Bank Ltd.  -- aim to roll out the service to customers later this year.  Ripple is already working with banks in other countries to overhaul how they handle payments. Blockchain, the digital ledger technology being used for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, has been touted as a potential way to track transactions in a range of industries. In Japan, banks and  authorities  are keen to embrace financial technology to improve efficiency as high costs and low interest rate...

SBI Ripple Asia  announced today that a consortium of 47 banks have successfully completed a pilot implementation of Ripple in Japan using a cloud-based payments platform. This platform, RC Cloud, is powered by Ripple’s solution and is the first in the world to enable real-time money transfers both domestically and internationally. As a result, the consortium has confirmed that it will move into commercial phase. Announcing 47 Japanese banks transferring money in real-time on #Ripple – next stop, commercialization! TWEET THIS  “Consortiums are not hard to come by in this industry, but what makes this significant is that these leading Japanese banks are focused on a clear use case and moving blockchain into production,” said CEO of Ripple Brad Garlinghouse. “This is a concrete example that our solution is already transforming how money is sent around the world.” With 47 banks utilizing Ripple’s solution to enhance their payments system, the consortium has made l...