Superforecasting cryptocurrencies: Week 8 Day 2: Profit-taking rules OK

nusefile(39)

Published in

#crypto

Words

661

Reading

3 min

Listen

Play

17 October 2017

Ripples across the market

After a week in which Bitcoin, Ripple and Litecoin gained 25%, the profit-taking that set in on 17 October and continued over the following day was almost inevitable, with declines in price across the board, except for a blip on Bitcoin Cash pricing.

Commentators were slow to incorporate the Swell conference organized by Ripple, with former US Federal Reserve supremo Bernard Bernanke as a keynote speaker, into their reports, but it seems the most obvious explanation for Ripple's sudden ascension. Its 24-hour volume of trade on 16 October was four times as much as on 14 and 15 October, and as always Korean trading was predominant.

The seven-day differences indicate that traders rather than investors dominate the market, i.e. a sell-off meets no real counterweight from investors who find the lower prices reason to buy.

Cryptodevelopments

Coindesk had a report on Swell by Bailey Reutzel on 17 October: "Banco Santander and Siam Commercial Bank talked about how Ripple – and its XRP cryptocurrency – has provided a beneficial rail for cross-border payments," he noted.

More significantly, perhaps, he reported:

Not only did former Federal Reserve chairman Dr. Ben Bernanke (who led the U.S. central bank during the 2008 financial crisis) question whether bitcoin would be successful, but many of Swell's panelists made it clear that just by speaking about blockchain technology, they were not promoting bitcoin and other "unregulated" cryptocurrencies.

'Failure to replace credit cards and banks'

A Ripple executive took another bash at rival cryptocurrencies:

Cryptocurrency's "promise was to replace credit cards and banks and that's been an abysmal failure," said Patrick Griffin, senior vice president of business development at Ripple

Instead, Griffin continued, XRP is the only enterprise-grade option for banks and other mature financial institutions.

Reutzel admitted: "To be fair, XRP wasn't pumped quite so hard until the last panel discussion."

There was some news:

Gates Foundation using Ripple technology

On Sunday, during the Swell conference's pre-events, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation also announced it's using technology developed by Ripple with its release of open-source software Majaloop, which looks to provide an interoperability layer between financial institutions that offer services to the poor and unbanked.

Investors weren't impressed

But, Reutzel added, with that being the only news to come out of Swell so far, XRP investors were seemingly less than ecstatic, selling off the cryptocurrency to drop the price about four cents during the day's events.

As for Sibos...

The event took place almost on the same day in the same city, Toronto, as Sibos, the SWIFT system's rival conference. "Presenters seemingly went out of their way not to mention Ripple," Reutzel reports. "The closest anyone came was when the CEO of Swift Gottfried Leibbrandt took a jab at Ripple while describing the financial incumbent's Global Payments Initiative." Michael del Castillo reported the details for coindesk on 16 October.

Spanish Banks and Technology Firms Launch the Alastria Blockchain Consortium

Various tech firms and banks in Spain have launched Alastria, a non-profit blockchain consortium that wants to serve as a national tokenization platform and focus on digital ID.

JP Buntinx reported on 18 October for newsbtc:

Membership of Alastria is not free though. There are different tiers depending on the type of business trying to become a part of this initiative. Startups pay a fee of 500 euro, whereas large businesses pay 10,000 euro. It is expected Alastria will use this money to fund future blockchain development. This business model is quite similar to R3, which also has a few Spanish companies among its members.