The State of The Market: Today was another slow day for the market, as Bitcoin went from $6,500 to $6,610, only to fall back to $6,500 once again. The 24-hour change for Bitcoin is just -0.16%. Ethereum has also been stable at $228. However, XRP, which went up by more than 100% last week in anticipation of its invite-only event which took place today, did not move. It is still at $0.56, though the company announced new partnerships at the event for its xRapid product.
Ripple announced on Twitter that its xRapid product is going into commercial production. A trio of firms, Mercury FX, Cuallix and Catalyst Corporate Federal Credit Union, will be the maiden Ripple customers “to make on-demand cross-border payments” on the RippleNet platform with the XRP cryptocurrency, according to a tweet by the blockchain startup. Ripple executives alluded to this development in recent weeks, and the company tied in its Swell conference with the announcement (read more).
The Ethereum Enterprise Alliance (EEA), which has over 100 enterprise members has announced a partnership with Hyperledger. EEA is an organization to help enterprises use the Ethereum blockchain, while Hyperledger develops open-source blockchain solutions. The goal of this partnership is to drive blockchain adoption. Hyperledger developers will now be able to join EEA and acquire EEA certification required for compliance. Ethereum Enterprise Alliance has some of the biggest names in the industry, like JP Morgan, Intel, Microsoft, CME Group, Accenture, Ernst & Young, and Infosys (read more).
SIA has decided to block big mining companies by enacting a software update that will prevent certain types of mining hardware from mining on the platform. David Vorick of Nebulous recently announced that hardware manufactured by Nebulous will now serve as the primary method of mining SIA. According to Vorick, the hard fork is “better than resisting ASICs altogether” but he added that “we don’t believe that a cryptocurrency needs to embrace a parasitic or abusive ASIC monopoly.” Vorick also mentioned that a vote was held in a Reddit thread and the decision to fork is nearly 100 percent agreed (read more).