The State of the Market: Positive news regarding new partnerships in Saudi Arabia, Japan and the U.S. have pushed XRP up nearly 30% over the past 24-hours. Ripple also announced that its xRapid product could be a part of these new partnerships and may roll out within the next 1 to 2 months. Meanwhile, as Consensus 2018 takes place in Singapore, Binance and UPbit have announced plans to launch new cryptocurrency exchanges in the country which is known for its friendly approach to crypto-startups and exchanges. Currently the cryptocurrency market capitalization stands at $198.5 billion.
PNC recently completed a trial phase of Ripple’s xCurrent and now plans to fully integrate the proof-of-concept protocol throughout their entire banking system. The American company will now be able to execute lightning fast cross border payments and is one of the top-10 largest banks in the United States. Ripple hopes to convince the bank to adopt xRapid in the near future and at the moment there are more than 40 clients spread across six different continents that are using Ripple products. (Read More.)
Dash Text, a wallet service that enables transactions without the need of an internet excess, has launched its beta version in Venezuela. Dash Text, enables transactions of Dash using an SMS message. Lorenzo Rey, the co-founder of Dash Text, has said that his inspiration came from the inadequate access to Internet-enabled phones in Venezuela and Bitcoin Cash’s CoinText. Following the launch, Dash Text is only available to Movistar customers but will be soon rolled out to customers of other telecommunication companies upon its full release. (Read More.)
CME’s Group managing director, Tim McCourt thinks that Bitcoin futures did not cause a bearish trend in the market. He shared this view with B2C2 CEO, Phillip Gillespie during the Consensus Singapore 2018 conference. McCourt says that Bitcoin futures are a part of the market, and the derivative market has been growing mainly in the Asian markets. Further, McCourt said that they launched Bitcoin futures because of high demand from the participants in the market. (Read More.)