The sluggishness of the cryptocurrency market sets new records. One of them is the lowest volatility in the past few years. The BTC/USD has been stalling within the $6300-$6600 range for the second month in a row. On the one hand, such dynamics raises hopes among investors, who are waiting for another 2017, when after a long-lasting stagnation the market soared, sending Bitcoin sky high to the $20 000 mark. On the other hand, the absence of rapid price movements backed by the lack of significant news and market movers is an obvious sign of an established and mature market that has nothing to do with the immediate profit-making speculative environment.
We are more inclined to side with those traders, who harbor no illusions regarding future off-the-charts growth. Of course, the bullish sentiment may return, but towards other, more perspective and sought after crypto projects. Ripple, for instance, has all chances to steal the spotlight.
Though the past few days have not been exactly the best for Ripple in terms of market cap (the XRP/USD slipped from $0.77 to $0.4), there are still good chances that major buyers will turn their attention back to this crypto asset. Why so optimistic? Ripple has recently announced a full-fledged deployment of its xRapid service. The main feature of this technology is that it uses XRP tokens. This solution will allow remittance companies and payment providers to cut the costs associated with cross-border payments while increasing the transaction speed.
The results of the first projects using the xRapid technology and XRP tokens were revealed a few months ago. The project participants managed to reduce transaction costs by 50-70% and increase the transaction processing time from 2-3 days to a few minutes. We believe that it is the transaction speed that will give xRapid and Ripple their main competitive edge. The transaction processing time reduced from several days to several minutes will eliminate volatility risks associated with various assets. There will be no need for expensive currency hedging when making cross-border payments, which will inevitably lead to substantial cost savings.
The latest news from Ripple is quite encouraging. Last week its xRapid product became available for commercial use. Speaking at the annual Swell conference, Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse announced the first payment providers to use the new product. Among them are Mercury FX, Catalyst Corporate Federal Credit Union and Cuallix. The latter is already moving money from the US to Mexico, using XRP tokens as a liquidity source. The only question is - who is next?
We hope that you plan on buying some XRP too, it definitely seems like a promising investment.