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Follow-up - Bitso trade volumes DEC2019 thru JAN2020 - Patterns of ongoing deployment... As promised, please reference marked up chart below for your interest. Before I forget, I want to add one more tidbit of info related to the DoM (depth of market) costs that I've also been computing and capturing into a database... If you caught that recent comment from a Ripple Labs official, they described the following (paraphrased): "WU can charge up to 10% for cross-border remittances, we can provide the same for only 2%" Now, what's interesting about this, is the BASELINE ODL costs I've been seeing for the BS-buy and Bitso-sell, factoring for the FX rate and the DoM books, has in general been running at around 0.8% - sometimes low as 0.4% at lower volumes - BUT YESTERDAY, I was seeing around 1.2% and lower, which is obviously directly related to the higher volume they are driving on this corridor, coupled with the "re-balancing" rates with the arbitrage processes. So what we're seeing in the hard data, IS aligning with official comments - and also implies that the additional overhead costs (plus profits?) are the additional 1% to result in their claimed "2%" total cost. I'd like to add, that I believe once the liquidity is deeper, and the volumes are higher, they'll get the baseline "friction" down even lower. This will be fascinating to watch for What you see in the chart below, is three key points: Weekends and holiday periods are a bit chaotic - I also saw this around our Nov 2019 Thanksgiving time (see posts in Bitso thread). Before the late Dec. "madness" period, we were seeing a slow and steady ramp up of weekday volumes. The two post-madness period (J2/J3) we see a re-establishment of weekday volumes, and yesterday's heavy 2.11m volume (2nd ATH recorded) - combined with four days of increasing volume, depict the heaviest week evah ! NEXT WEEK SHOULD BE INTERESTING, eh mates ?!!

http://galgitron.net/Post/The-Case-for-XRP Very thorough piece posted today from the universally popular Galgitron. And only uses the word **** once lol. I like his analogy with the concept of the gravity of value, eventually winning the day. The BTC Maxies will will all collectively be triggered into fits, which is always fun.

I tend to agree with you. There's more going on here than what we, as 3rd party on-lookers, are privy to. Like you said, you don't get investors to pony up 200-million dollars via a Series C if they suspect they wouldn't/couldn't see a return on that size of an investment. I think that 1 of 3 things are possible. The 1st is that Ripple is about to make a significant acquisition (most likely). The 2nd is that they are working on a merger between themselves and another entity (my #2 guess). The 3rd and final is that they are possibly being bought-out (least likely). All of this is pure speculation on my part, however, I believe it fits/aligns with recent statements (01:15 - 01:47) made by Brad G (Ripple CEO) of late around the topic of M&A/Consolidation of this space. In a recent Fortune article regarding Ripple's recent Series C funding round Brad stated that "the company did not need the money, though the funds will provide "balance sheet flexibility." "Balance Sheet Flexibility," to me, is code for a M&A move. He goes on to say, at the end of that article, "It's been a tremendous, tremendous year for Ripple....adding that the company will be disclosing more numbers and major announcements in early 2020." If either of my assumptions above are true, I suspect the exodus of these top executives and directors is as a result of negotiated re-structuring. As with most M&As often times the acquiring company or newly merged entity has to streamline the work-force. I'm expecting to hear something significant from Ripple on the M&A front here shortly or within the next couple of months.

https://www.xrparcade.com/event/david-schwartz-on-cto-connection-audio/

*Longish post warning* Okay so we're all speculating that in the long term, ODL will ultimately drive a higher price. But how can that happen? What we've seen so far is that there is, currently, very little correlation between increased ODL volume and the overall price of XRP. That much I believe we can agree on. So does volume actually increase the price? My short answer is no, but all of the factors that are impacted by increased volume "should" drive positive price correlation. As Ripple continues to engage in new exchange partners, these exchange partners begin acting as Market Makers (MMs) and subsequently begin working with high volume traders to become MMs for ODL transactions. That's basically how it works. So, with an increase in overall transaction volume through ODL, this will facilitate a larger need for MMs. These MMs are required to hold XRP on the exchange and fill the order books to facilitate transactions and then they get some economic incentive (differs by exchange). With more MMs come more people purchasing large amounts of XRP on the open market to then use in their market making. This alone will impact the current supply as the economics of market making drive more large scale traders to work with the exchanges to get their cut of the fees. This, I believe, will cause an increase in price, nothing else. And don't even get me started on banks. Once clear regulations are in place, I believe that banks, with their large amounts of currency, will begin market making for ODL transactions to get a cut of fees. This could be a huge revenue source for these banks. We could also see banks buying exchanges specifically for the purposes of facilitating ODL transactions for their own financial gain. At this point, the price of XRP would be significantly higher than where we have it today, just from the standpoint of very large institutions own XRP solely for the purposes of facilitating ODL transactions. Fast forward 10-20 years, these same institutions are just going to send XRP back and forth because it has a clear value usage in their cross border flows. Long and short, market making is what will grow the price and volume needs to be much higher than where we are today to incentivize more MMs. Ripple is doing exactly what is necessary, growing exchange partners and launching new corridors. The positive price action from the increased MMs will do the rest.

So what’s changed to make that unlikely or impossible? Well, there have been many people burnt by crypto who wouldn’t now touch it with a barge pole. The reputation of crypto in the main stream media is a mish mash of being either a criminal enterprise and/or a bubble. So any one coming in would probably now need much more than just white papers and hype to support their investment decision. So that would point to thinking it can’t happen again. As against that... back then there were serious hurdles to investing, long waiting lists to get on to an exchange, slow fiat rails to the exchange, a lack of information and storage solutions for new investors. Additionally, buying XRP often involved buying Bitcoin first then transferring to another exchange then trading for XRP. Since then fiat on ramps are everywhere, and all of those issues are largely or completely mitigated. The exchanges have undergone torture tests and are now much beefier. Even so, the percentage of people involved in crypto last time was very low overall. So if new money did want to flow in it could do so much easier than in the past. That fact in a fomo situation would be like rocket fuel to the price in a much greater way than last time. But why would money come? Firstly people have short memories for getting burnt... witness endless boom and bust cycles in housing. Secondly, this time around there is likely to be much more legitimate enterprise activity. Real and legitimate large companies are now moving into the crypto space... German law, other countries... they are all, in various ways, legitimising the concept of crypto investments. In many countries across the world the previously unaware populace are being exposed to blockchain technologies. Main stream media who are largely antagonistic at the moment can turn on a dime and then start shouting ‘the bigger the base the higher in space’. IF there is a bull run then it is likely the media will do exactly that.. and remember that the blockages of the past largely no longer exist. This next one could be much much bigger...

The State of the Union for Bitcoin – it’s Strong. When I started this thread this day last year January 24, 2019 – Bitcoin’s price was at $3,629 moving toward a breakout of the Pennant downtrend that began after Bitcoin reached it’s all time high of around $20k in December of 2017. Bitcoin broke out of the downtrend on February 1, 2019 at 9:31 Eastern US time at a price of $3,548. At that time I wrote that the bottom was in and we would move up and sideways from there. After we broke out of the downtrend I used that point to correlate when Bitcoin would reach it’s ATH again, based on when the breakout occurred in the past cycle. As we had broken out much sooner this cycle, I supposed that Bitcoin’s cycle would play out on a condensed timeline and that Bitcoin would retake it’s ATH of near $20k by the end of November 2019. (I also felt bitcoin’s move would drag XRP with it and XRP would reach it’s ATH in 2019 – this did not happen.) In February 2019 I began looking to the 50, 100 and 200 Day EMA’s for direction. On April 6, 2019 - the 50 Day EMA made a bullish cross (Golden Cross) of the 100 Day EMA at a price of $4,937. These indicators were useful until the price rose so dramatically through June (as I expected - but thought would continue through November) and the 100 EMA was well above the 200 day EMA and this method was no longer useful. (except to anticipate the next downtrend). On October 3, 2019 the 50 Day EMA made a Bearish cross (Death Cross) of the 100 Day EMA at a price of 8,237 Now Bitcoin’s price is $8,473 - We have just broke out of the Downtrend that began this past June on January 12, 2020 at a price of $8,181. Once again the 50 – 100 and 200 EMA’s are useful and approaching a Bullish Crossover. The prior times we had a Golden Cross of the 50 and 100 Day EMA prior to the Halving occurred as followed: 50/100 Golden Cross - June 5, 2012 at a price of $5.25 which occurred 117 prior to the Halving of November 28, 2012, price at the halving was $12.12, peak of Bitcoin’s price occurred 485 Days later November 30, 2013 at a price pf $1,161 & 50/100 Golden Cross - October 20, 2015 at a price of $270 – which was 264 days prior to the Halving of July 9, 2016, price at the Halving was $657, peak of Bitcoin’s price occurred 790 days December 17, 2017 at a price of $19,721. At present Bitcoin is less than 109 days from it halving which is slated to occur May 12, 2020. https://www.bitcoinblockhalf.com/ The Bitcoin Hashrate is at it’s second highest level ever. https://www.blockchain.com/en/charts/hash-rate And Bitcoin is staring at another Gold Cross of the 50 and 100 Day EMA which should occur within 10 days. The last two cycles from the price of this cross to the peak of it’s price - Bitcoin rose 221X and 73x respectively. When and at what price the 50 and 100 Day EMA will be crossing is something I will be watching closely. Although the timeframe has changed since my earlier posts my belief that we will replay the cycle has not changed. I am just as Bullish on Bitcoin as I have ever been. If the cycle plays out sort of like it did in the past Bitcoin is looking to begin a bull run which should last for the next 1 to 2 years.

It seems like there are multiple, concurrent events that will drive the price of XRP upward. Increasing ODL liquidity needs would gradually create the perception of value and scarcity that is necessary to support a sustainable and long-term price increase. The important price driver that I think tends to get a bad rap is speculation. Whether we choose to accept it or not, speculation (and sharp instinct) is fundamentally the backbone of any emerging business enterprise. People (and institutions) must believe in the success of the investment before they invest in it and before it ever actually becomes successful. Ultimately, we want market makers to believe that they should hold XRP as a source of security and stability against an otherwise unstable monetary system that will ultimately be crippled by an over leveraged debt system. The narrative that is sown about the asset is important at this stage. It is also true that euphoric belief in the growth of an asset is the underlying driver of speculative and parabolic bubbles. This is why I think when the XRP price goes up, it will be very fast--like Bitcoin's price movement. The price increase will represent an overspeculation in that moment about the real value of XRP in that moment. What must happen during and after the initial, speculative parabolic run is the continued embrace of ODL as a viable alternative to servicing transfers in corridors that are not within the clenches of international central banks (maybe Africa, Southwest Asia). The price will crash hard after the next parabolic run. But I do not think it will crash down to .20. Maybe it will go up to $50 and drop to $5 (obviously guessing here). The next parabolic run & crash will cause a lot of people to prematurely pull out of the investment. This is why very few people become rich. It takes an insane exercise of willpower and strength to hold onto an investment at this stage in its growth. Human nature usually wins. Just my two cents. I'm new here so please forgive the newb for her transgressions (if any).

XRParcade is 1 year old, time flies by!

Bitkub are becoming Ripples official exchange in Thailand and they have announced 7 Thai banks are signed up to start using their ODL services, see slide Slide at 47.00 Crypto Eri explains it better than I can So that is seven banks in one hit! 2020 will be good for Ripple

ODL usage increases with liquidity in the market per corridor. Liquidity is provided by market makers. Market makes do not take speculative positions (outright just hold XRP), Market Makers make the fee. They have to hold XRP to do business and collect the fee. Market Makers need to offset the risk of holding XRP. This is done through derivatives. Options, Futures, ETF's, preferably XRP following, but can also be done with correlated assets, like the BTC futures. Derivatives were mentioned in the 2019 Q4 report. For some reason, no one has mentioned this yet. Ripple even links to a 1999 report. Dilap Rao had a tweet today about derivatives as well. The more MM's can de risk their XRP holdings, the more XRP they can hold, the more liquidity they can provide, the more payments and higher volume payments can be sent. Nos / Vos can start to be reduce. Ripple bootstrapped MM's early on with incentive programs, loaning with no risk, but receiving the upside of price appreciation. These incentive mechanisms work to bootstrap, but are not the long term play. 2020 = A focus on regulated liquid derivative markets. This is the next phase.

I am not an economist but when I run models of the transactions in my head I can see many ways that volume of ODL increases value of XRP. Points which I think make your statement wrong. The XRP is not "returned right after". The XRP goes from America and lands in China, where (because of imbalances in trade) they build up. The Chinese exchange paid X + TC (transaction Charge). So the XRP has to be bought back by America at a later time at X + TC +TC2 = Y. Every corridor has to have an exchange with stock of XRP at each end, on sale within narrow spreads. The spreads narrow as the price accrues upwards. So for high value or high vol transactions you have to have high value XRP The only useful stock is the XRP that is available in the narrow band of spread that is being utilised. It is no good to use XRP that is over priced. Also a bank that has branches in more than one country might own XRP which it sends backwards and forwards between different subsidiaries, so HSBC might begin to have a pile of XRP that goes back and fore from China to the UK on a closed system. Then there are areas where XRP will be locked up in smart contracts I think the ways ODL sends the price upwards are endless.

No I am not, yet. But I am freerolling on my xrp-investment. In the meantime, I doubled my income from my job and I have set up a plan to get to financial freedom. I will get there. XRP could make it happen faster, but if it goes to zero, so be it. It's an advice I am happy to share: don't care about the price of xrp. Get your life on the right track. See your investment in xrp or other cryptos as a possible turbo to get to your goal a lot faster. But don't panic if the price stays this low for years. Don't let your happiness depend on the price of a crypto-asset

A big take away here is a new EUR-USD corridor. This is the exact opposite of the smaller, high friction corridors they've gone after for remittance and suggests to me there are big companies pushing for use behind the scenes for other uses. What companies want to use XRP ODL in this corridor? In what ways? Trade finance comes to mind.

It’s actually laughable that on one hand, you talk about a CBDC negating the role of a neutral third party currency like XRP for cross border payments, and then in the same breath talk about crypto being used for online payments as some sort of holy grail Crypto used for online payments is one of the first use cases that a retail CBDC will capture. Neither the merchant, nor the customer has any incentive to use a third party currency/ DA if the CBDC of their central bank offers fast, secure, cheap atomic settlements Unless of course, you’re talking about privacy coins. In which case, do some research about the legislative direction several world powers are taking against them

Here you go

https://www.xrparcade.com/news/citi-experimented-with-ripple/

In my XRP-related blog I talk about the network effect of adding currencies to the ledger and what crawl, walk, run really looks like. https://coil.com/p/Mikey_Ashman/Crawl-walk-run-fly-teleport/wTEyoug_l

Thanks for sharing mate, I too was closely monitoring the hourly Bitso trade volumes yesterday, and noticed something new in "The ODL Force" (see chart below). You've inspired me to post a 2nd chart, which I'll mark it up to help describe the more granular patterns exhibited over the last two months... Below, you can see the five hour "spike" spanning hours 17:14 thru 17:18 - with XRP volumes spanning 2.3m to 1.2m trades EACH HOUR. This typically has only occurred once or twice in a 24 hour cycle. In fact, the hours prior and post this 5-hr span were consistently running "hot" at around 750k per hour, when more typical it's been averaging 600k or less per hour. All of this will make more sense in context of the daily patterns of the last two months, I'll work on that next and post it next...

Oh boy... So these are the sources you base your negative sentiment on. You're being informed by cryptoslate. I thought you researched, but you just take tabloid quality sites for real. Read the other articles they provide. They, just like you, don't like XRP and Ripple. "Why do people think I'm a troll, I don't get it..." What are you doing here anyway the price is trending up currently.

@PunishmentOfLuxury posted a really great video of CryptoEri interviewing Flashfx's Nicolas Steiger just here, I am pondering about whether to write a blog regarding Nicolas's body language and would like some feedback because it would take a good number of hours and I don't want to waste my time if nobody is interested so here's my views on the first four minutes. I actually did a blog a while back (link below) reviewing his interview with Mr Nugget but that was just audio which is where I found his "tell" when asked questions he doesn't like to answer. https://coil.com/p/Mikey_Ashman/Flashy-Fx/YXzhT4tuu As for this video, this is what I have noted down to begin with. @0:00 Starts off nervous with tense shoulders and using the table as support with both arms, also notice the large breaths in @0:31. The heart is pumping harder than usual so it needs more oxygen so the breaths get heavier. His heart is going and he is using the table as support, clearly not use to being on camera in this manner. Doesn’t start relaxing until @2:30. @1:17 mentions Bitstamp and smiles, probably because they are happy to have finally got a deal with the USD/AUD corridor. Mentions again with a little smile/laugh at @2:12. @1:29 looks down before answering the question indicates he’s not super comfortable with saying whether Ripple approached them for help or vice versa. Shows quite well in his answer which is somewhat evasive and just focuses on how they expanded their corridors without mentioning specifically whether Ripple asked them to. @2:35, does his “tell” lol. Doesn’t like the question. Hence him not giving any names, talks about “team effort” then changes the answer topic to corridors again but does it with a smile. New corridors opening makes him happy.

My own estimate of ODL activity summed for all corridors looks like this: A quite significant peak a couple of days ago around the $4m mark. The noticeable dip is the Xmas holidays. The overall direction is still heading upwards. I won't be happy until I see more than $100m per day at the very least. I see quite a lot of traffic from binance to other exchanges that looks similar in pattern to ODL corridors, but I'm not including it as binance is not 'on the list' of approved exchanges (It's probably just money laundering from the many scams going on out there).

https://www.xrparcade.com/news/banco-topazio-working-with-ripple/

This current run from $0.18 to $0.24 kind of feels like the previous run from $0.21 to $0.31 from September to November. But there is a key difference this time that makes it seem more likely to be a true reversal. Volume. Look at the stretch from Sept to Nov. Price increases but volume does not. That is generally indicative of a false run. Now look at the current run from $0.18. Volume is picking up rather substantially and is much higher than the previous stretch from the fall run. I think we're on to something.

I’m fairly sure it will go much higher. But apparently not sure enough to tell my boss I’m retiring now. Sigh.

I could not find the we will never see prices this low again option.

https://www.xrparcade.com/news/ripple-to-reach-argentina-through-paypal-transferwise-partner-nubi/

Ripple have just borrowed 200 million on top of money they have in the bank, so the theory on the Zigone thread is they are positioning to buy or merge. Maybe with R3. If you were the owners of Ripple would you sell to Google? It seems the wrong tome to sell and lose control over your products that are awaiting reg clarity before bursting on the market.

You will be waiting 10+ years for XRP to hit 30 USD. Why? Because of a specific buzzword you are sure to hear going around... FINTECH. Let's look at this word. It comprises of two parts: Fin - finance, and tech - technology. There is already a problem here. Finance moves incredibly slowly and is anti-innovation, technology moves very fast and is pro-innovation. Bang. And therein lies the fundamental problem when it comes to XRP: the clash of industries. Let's look at cloud adoption as an analogy. Cloud really took off late 2000's, and are large corporations hosting critical processes in the cloud? Nope. Why? Because they're big and they move slowly. They may host non-critical workloads in the cloud, but on-premise private cloud is still a thing and it's not going anywhere anytime soon. Now with XRP. Banks, especially T1 Banks, are some of the slowest and most clunky of the large corporations, whereas XRP is some of the trendiest and most cutting-edge of technologies. What do you think will happen when these two contrasting worlds collide? I mean, good heavens, Banks have stuck with Swift for almost 50 years for a reason - they really do not like change. What makes you think they'll migrate their critical workloads over to the XRP ledger in 1, 2 or 3 years? Stop being silly. A common criticism: People like to bring up Facebook and Instragram adoption rates by the end user, and like to tout this as evidence that XRP will grow in a similar fashion. WRONG, and it really pisses me off when people present this reasoning, actually. XRP focuses its utility on the backend where no user is directly involved; Facebook, Instragram and the like are focusing on the front-end user. They are completely different beasts. If you want XRP's price to go up, its backend usage needs to increase, to hell with BitPay and small transactions from the front-end users, that isn't what you should be looking for.

Yet you start spreading opinions as facts (it's in your name, i reckon) that in your opinion are not misinformation... Let's just agree no one knows anything about the future. Banks are slow generally, but can suddenly be fast when forced to when financially triggered. Source: I work at one.

@Tinyaccount Would be rather amusing if they are here to complain after buying at the recent premium of $0.25.

I am a fan of Tiffany. She is very intelligent and well clued up, but I cannot make any sense of what she is warning us might happen. None of it makes any sense to me. Every country in the world needs and CBDC, just like every country in the world need digital Telecoms. Lots of them will consult ripple and R3 to set up their CBDCs because Ripple set up the ILP and Ripple have the best teams. It is incredibly good news For XRP that the world is going digital. It enhances the case for a without-counter-party-bridging-asset Central Banks are looking at ways of building rails between their banks - good on them. If it is a single corridor rail like between London and New York they will need a token that converts pounds to dollars and dollars to pounds. A stable coin will be useless unless the token is constantly sensitive to value changes in the financial exchanges. Just sending digital dollars and digital pounds to each other does not solve very much, because digital dollars are not much use to a British business paying their bills in pounds. They will still need someone in Britain who is buying dollars for pounds. Central Banks are looking to create a multi-denomination token. This just multiplies up the problems of how do you value the tokens without getting wrecked XRP is an elegant solution that avoids all the above I'm jealous! Can someone tell me who is Tiffany dating? I think the use case for XRP is getting stronger and stronger. Seven Thai banks joining in using ODL - 100% of India working with Ripple - 80% of Japanese banks in the SBI consortium...endless good news. Do I think XRP will reach 100 dollars; Yes I do, but I would not put a date on how long it will take to reach those sorts of levels.

Greetings ladies ! And gents too. I'm capturing here for posterity today's snapshot of the dual orderbooks, and its spreads; note it's back down to lower costs, but while Bitso bid book's depth is a bit shallow, it's VERY heartening that regardless we're seeing high volumes the last two hours - I'd love to see the XRPL transaction metrics of the last two hours too ! Note the Bitso's bid stack, the trade volume, and table of sample spreads - this seems to indicate some very responsive arbitration rates, or maybe ODL is doing bigger transfers - pls if anyone can check... DO post it THE HOURLY VOLUME : THE ORDER BOOKS RIGHT NOW : THE SPREADS RIGHT NOW :

https://www.xrparcade.com/news/bitkub-is-ripples-official-exchange-partner-in-thailand/

I was going to say something similar yesterday... it’s ironic that the reason SEC wants to have a say on these matters is to protect investors... and their reluctance or inability to have that say in this case is exactly the thing that is hurting investors the most. Very ironic.

I find it fascinating SBI appears to share your sentiment. Ripple stakeholder Japanese bank consortium SBI is opening up a giant BTC mining farm in Texas. They've a goal to manage 30% of the network’s hash rate, their stated goal to bring more stability and institutional confidence into the Crypto space overall. Crypto Eri covered this news in her video yesterday. The crypto space’s reliance on BTC kind of reminds me of how the early Internet was hugely dependent upon the unix servers made by Sun Microsystems (now defunct).

This is simply false, and to support my argument, I quote Ripple's reply to Plaintiff's response (page 1): https://www.scribd.com/document/438446249/Ripple-Reply-to-Response "Opp. 1. XRP is not a security, Mot. 21 n.19, but that is irrelevant for purposes of this motion. Even if XRP were a security, Plaintiff’s claims still fail as a matter of law." Ripple is opposing Plaintiff's arguments even in the case XRP was a security, but are clearly repeating their position that XRP is not a security. EDIT: I read your post again, and indeed, you actually agree with this yourself. As you wrote, arguendo, for the sake of the argument, Ripple states that even if XRP was a security, the Plaintiff's claims do not hold. This is not the same as them stating XRP is a security, as you state in your post: Please, support your argument with a quote where Ripple admits that XRP is a security. That statement is absent in most recent court filings, but I was able to find a quote from Ripple explicitly saying it is not a security from the same court filings you supposedly cite.

I just don't know anymore. I've never seen anything this irrational in my life.

I suggest you read Davids tweet again (with an open mind if possible). The thread he commented on was about ICO's. If you then look at what David said in the tweet highlighted above, he was talking about the early startup days of Ripple, how they were funded and when they first started selling XRP. I don't believe he was talking about recent sales of XRP. This is just my take on it after re-reading a few times. I think David was not clear about which period of time in Ripple's history he was talking about, but then again, why should he have to be - the conversation was about ICO periods in various coins history. At first glance the comment seems questionable, I grant you that, but if you read the thread in its entirety, I think it is pretty obvious. The Mike Dudas's of the world were always going to have a field day with it.

I would argue the theory that Ripple is now doing an IPO because they won’t be able to sell 1 billion XRP per month if the price hits 10 USD is one is the least likely. First off, they have been strictly limiting their sales according to the volume on exchanges (0.4% of total volume in Q3 2019). If Ripple were to sell 1 billion XRP at 10 USD/XRP, the monthly volume on exchanges for XRP would have to be 2.5 trillion USD. The average daily volume for XRP would need to be 83 billion USD. If the volume actually was that high, then there would also be a good possibility the market could easily swallow up the 0.3 billion USD Ripple would be throwing into it daily. We are, however, currently far from that. In reality, if XRP was worth 10 USD today, with a daily average volume of 200 million USD, per their own restrictions, they could only sell 80k XRP per day, or 2.4 million XRP per month. That means every month, there would be 0.997 billion XRP of the 1 billion XRP going back into an escrow. Of course, it is doubtful the volume would stay that low with the price per XRP so high, and as we saw in the December 2017 bull run, the volume logically quickly picks up. Ripple literally announced they are limiting programmatic sales in advance and has now followed through their promise. Is this not what we all wanted? Bitcoin’s estimated annual mining costs at this moment are 3.5 billion USD (https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption ), which means BTC miners have to cash out 300 million USD per month just to pay the electricity bills alone. Per Ripple’s last market report, they sold zero on the market and 13 million USD worth of XRP to institutions. Comparing both coins, in the last 3 months, BTC miners cashed out about 900 million USD to pay for electricity, while Ripple cashed out 13 million. Again, BTC miners cashed out 70x more USD compared to Ripple in Q4 2019. You are right to trust no one and be careful in this market. But I am flabbergasted at how so many people started worrying once Ripple hinted at a possibility of an IPO. Critics always accused Ripple of selling XRP to fund their business, but the moment Ripple limits their XRP sales and finds an alternative way to get money, everyone loses their minds. Like you, I can only speculate why they are doing an IPO. It could be to raise more money in the future, it could be a better argument against the SEC about XRP not being a security, or it could be early investors wanting liquidity on Ripple stocks to catch some profit. It could be some reason none of us yet thought of. Whatever the case, any new shareholder will want what is best for XRP, because it represents the majority of the company’s current 10 billion USD valuation (as per their last investment round). Imagine being a Ripple stockholder right now. Would you not want what is best for XRP, since the price of XRP directly affects the price of the stock you are holding? If not, it would be like investing in an oil company and not caring what is happening to the price of oil on open markets. And to conclude this long post, I would like to again highlight the fact that Ripple has obviously significantly limited their XRP sales throughout 2019, despite the fact they had 1 billion XRP available per month. What’s more, they limited their sales in correlation to volume (down from 0.4% in Q3 to 0.08% in Q4), so Ripple sold less because they chose to do so, not because they could not sell at all. This means that in the following months, Ripple (by far the largest XRP holder) will basically stop their XRP sales, while BTC miners will continue to cash out about 300 million USD per month, because they still have to pay the bills. With this fact in mind, doesn’t XRP seem like a better investment, speaking purely supply/demand wise?

I spent quite some time decommissioning IBM mainframe applications. Decommissioning those lovely IBM solutions is both cumbersome and costly thanks to IBM’s cost model and their outrageous contract structure. Those 97% and 90% are just waiting for an alternative, almost everybody who worked with IBM truly hates their software by now.

You are bringing one good news story after the next - thank you

So the Visa token is not a cryptocurrency, so to speak, it is a online TX token that they are putting on blockchain for security's sake. It represents a card, or perhaps the card transaction, but it is not the transfer of value itself, just a secure record. This "token" will never be on an exchange; it's an ID security protocol for the internet. The W3C has been working to standardize some of these things.

I totally agree. Blockchain semantics is the ultimate-ratio in any governance where costs, speed, transparency and documentation is needed. It's only the US administration that have currently issues with being on-time. The switch towards the IoV is already happening (see Europe and Asia). And of course XRP will play a significant role in it. Retail investors in general are very fragile and manipulatable people if it's about their money. A non-mineable B2B utility asset like XRP, that is actually mobbed by the mining industry, needs institutional investors, and they will be part of the market in ever increasing numbers. I really have no doubts. Sources: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/blockchain-technologies et al.

At the risk of sounding like the scrooge of Xmas, I'm expecting around 3600 usd per bitcoin in the near to mid-term. Once you strip away the FOMO, the Reddit, Twitter, YouTube hype and just look at the graphs... I'd say 3600 usd is incoming. I've lost 5-figures on XRP and I only started investing in June of last year! But, I've never once ranted or complained about the loss. It has however made me more cautious and a lot of people posting graphs here use TA and subconsciously slant it with upwards price movement in mind. If anyone wants to see the graphs I'm looking at for 3600 I'm more than happy to post (they aren't mine though). There has to be a voice of reason, if for nothing than to stop inexperienced people from losing money, and it's those people who tend to invest more than they can afford to lose. @Eric123 much love, but you've been consistently way off the mark. I would love for there to a bull-run, I like money. But wanting something and wishing it to be true doesn't work (just a general anecdote, not directed at you in any way). What I've found to be even more helpful than graphs, is the simple observation that if the price tends to keep bumping around a certain level, it inevitably goes down. XRP for example has failed to get above .22 even. It's going down imho; that's not scientific, but I'd be a hell of a lot more confident shorting it than long right now. Ditto for BTC. And the one I'd short the most is Bitcoin SV, that's cray cray... the most obvious short I've ever seen. If I had three kidneys, I'd bet two and a half on that. My post won't get the most likes, probably none, because people inherently don't like down-to-earth realistic and humble posts, but let's revisit this post in 3 months and see. I'm pretty smart and this is the conclusion I've come to after many months of research and having real skin in the game.

So we've been moving around the down trend line and we are currently above it, let's see how long this holds. Looking for a decisive move to the upside. Hash rate continues to increase and longs are deleveraging. 121 days til the halving, and Litecoin holding above $50. I think the people that were calling for $6k are out of luck. Go Baby Go.

First of all happy NY Zerpers! Since we're in a new year with new expectations, is it fair to say that this year should be a breakthrough year for Ripple / XRP considering the fact they're bullish in their report / view on crypto in general in 2020? If regulations will set a new definition for crypto, give the market a clear view should it be fair to say that Ripple / XRP should make big steps fwd? IMO we should see very big steps for Ripple / XRP if we get positive regulations. Brad and Ripple the company gave the impression that they we're penetrating the market since 2018-2019 and they we're confident in many ways that Ripple AND XRP will flourish once the market woud have been painted with a non-broad brush! If they don't get banks and FI to use xrp in 2020 with regulations, this would be a warning sign for me personally. I'm here since early 2017 and I'm in for a longterm game but I'd like to see Ripple delivering with XRP / On demand liquidity (not XCurrent), simply because of the fact that they were getting more confident in every way but they made clear that regulations are needed to open up the gas! Spill your thoughts!

Looked up something on the BTC chart just out of curiosity. Looked at the last "ATH" in December 2013 (~$1100) and I wanted to see how long it took until BTC touched that ATH again. Answer: 4 years. So, if that is how long the last cycle took to reclaim an ATH after a peak, I was curious to see where the price of BTC was 25 months after that peak (where we are currently after the December 2017 ATH). Answer: ~$350. So, about one third of the ATH peak price. Where are we today 25 months after the latest ATH? About one third of the peak price. Actually, a little higher, but only by a few percentage points. So, for all of the doom and gloom, BTC is behaving remarkably like it did in the last cycle that eventually saw a new ATH at multiples of the previous. Not to say that history will necessarily repeat itself, but I found it reassuring. FWIW.