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Q3 - Paradigm shift on the buying pressure of XRP Janna's interpretation After a very exhausting 2018 year during which the XRP/BTC chart was going in oblivion and a half of the 2019 year also quite frankly unsatisfying considering the +/- 300% surges of some of the top 15 coins, reading the Q2 2019 XRP Markets Report I personally felt a huge relief, which I have not really expressed because I am quite the private person. But here I will explain my reasoning and my own interpretation of what is most likely happening. Q2 2019 XRP Markets Report Before going any further, I will point out some key information which are coming straight out of the report. Since 2017, Ripple began providing XRP to meet FI's demand through the OTC desks in response to a lack of liquidity. The direct impact was obviously felt from everyone who had invested in XRP and even today. The price plummeted not only because of the BTC 85% drop, since XRP price is highly correlated to BTC, but in a more stealthy way from the strategy implemented by Ripple. During the past weeks, many members, myself included, were collecting information regarding the XRP exchanged on the network. Personally, I was trying to find comfort, because this is how I cope with it. Being still a fresh member, of this community and also an investor in this asset, my understanding of the network is ongoing. What was the most devastating to me and most likely to some other members was that the XRP exchanged and thus sold (for the most part) were a direct cause of the price being dropping / stagnant / sluggish compared to BTC slightly dropping / stagnant / increasing. Although, as stated in the report, this very strategy is the necessary step prior to what is coming. Since 2017, there is institutional demand for XRP which has heavily been sourced by the OTC desks, resulting in sale pressure (mostly observed on the XRP/BTC chart). I was explaining the XRP/BTC chart with mainly one factor, the performance of XRP compared to BTC throughout the whole bull phase (2015 - 2017). BTC bottom: 180 (January 2015) BTC peak: 19,000 (December 2017) BTC multiplier: 105 XRP bottom: 0.004 (December 2015) XRP peak: 3.8 (January 2018) XRP multiplier: 950 While this factor is a heavy participant in the equation of the XRP/BTC chart going downward to oblivion ever since the bull run was exhausted, throughout 2019 the trend was still ongoing while other top 15 assets were drastically increasing. In the report, Ripple states they decided to make a switch pulling back from providing XRP over-the-counter at scale toward the end of Q2. The key word is "decided", it does not mean they did it right away. Although, toward the end of Q2 it is true the sales had decreased, but it is only 1 of the 2 parts of the equation. Provide XRP to FI through the OTC desks Provide XRP to FI through the open-market (exchanges) Paradigm shift Throughout the month I observed a new trend on the XRP/BTC chart, starting the 11th July. The trend is ongoing and obviously translates into XRP gaining traction over BTC, but this is pretty new and I have not all the necessary information to confirm my theory, so I cannot say with full confidence I am right. As I said earlier, this is all my own interpretation. I think Ripple started providing XRP to FI through the open-market this month, meaning there is now enough liquidity from the exchanges for the current institutional demand. This results in buying pressure which translates into the XRP price soaring. We do not see the effect as of yet because XRP is still heavily coupled to BTC and BTC having recently surged a lot now needs momentum to find some new grounds. So in fine, BTC price dropped from 14k to 9k, which resulted in XRP price going from 0.5 to 0.3. But, now I want to focus on the 07/11/2019 to 07/26/2019 time frame and compare both BTC and XRP performances over the past 2 weeks. 07/11 Midnight UTC +2 BTC: $12,044 XRP: $0.36000 07/26 10 am UTC +2 BTC: $9760 XRP: $0.31300 BTC lost 19% of its value XRP lost 13% of its value I had noticed both BTC and XRP were finally moving in tandem, but given the information provided in the Q2 report together with the very recent trend I observed, it looks like the buying pressure from the institutions could be resulting in the XRP price slightly gaining traction. Again, this is all too new and I cannot confirm everything. But if Ripple started not only to decrease their sales OTC and also started providing XRP to FI through the open-market, then the direct consequence would be XRP/BTC moving upward, or at the very least a relative reduction of the XRP/BTC downtrend (depending on the % of the XRP allocated to OTC and open-market). Obviously, if the trend for BTC was moving upward, we would notice it even better. I am eager to see how the trend will play out but I feel much more positive after reading the Q2 report coupled with my observations of this very recent trend.

They gush a bit about Ripple and xRapid "Ripple has become our key partner for settling cross border payments using digital assets" "Sooo excited to announce today that moneygram is live and settling transactions on the xRapid platform" "we started executing trades this week and all signs point to this being a tremendously beneficial relationship for all parties involved" "we are literally settling trades in seconds and quote my friend Larry 'this is really cool'"

All right folks, let's dive into #UBRI initiative and see what is it all about. I see a lot of ******** and idiotic comments passing by about this UBRI initative. Let's see what kind of jobs are going to be created. I'm going to expand this topic as I go (I just started to look into this out of curiosity)... UBRI-numbering given below starts from the top-left corner and ends at the bottom-right corner following Ripple's academic partners shown at https://ubri.ripple.com/ UBRI#1: Australian National University (ANU) College of Law https://law.anu.edu.au/news-and-events/news/anu-receives-us1m-study-blockchain-and-law-technology The Australian National University has become the first in the country to secure US$1 million to research and create courses around the legal implications for the law profession and governments from the emerging technologies of blockchain, smart contracts, and digital payments. Scott Chamberlain (https://twitter.com/scotty2ten and https://twitter.com/morley_alana/status/1098807708533178368), a Senior Lecturer in the ANU College of Law, has received the funds from US-based cryptocurrency exchange platform Ripple, as part of its US$50m University Blockchain Research Initiative. “The internet has exploded the amount of interactions and information we can share with other people, but it didn’t explode trust,” Mr Chamberlain says. “That leads to all sorts of things like online identify theft and intellectual property infringements. “Part of what Ripple’s looking at is can blockchain add a value layer to that, so the Internet of Data matches with the Internet of Value. “We’re proud to be both the first Law faculty and the first Australian university involved in this exciting research initiative,”. “The legal implications for these emerging technologies are immense, and we are thrilled that our staff and students will be in the front row of researching what it all means for the legal profession and governments.” Mr Chamberlain and his research partners, starting with software developers, will study whether emerging financial technologies can help. “I’m looking at what I call the ‘Lex Automagica Tech Stack’ – blockchain, plus digital assets, plus smart contracts, plus AI (Artificial Intelligence), plus AR and VR (Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality – that can power our societies like clockwork.” “There’s a whole lot of things that need research, it’s not just blockchain but legal tech in general. The whole space is a Cambrian explosion of new and wonderful things to sink your teeth into.” Mr Chamberlain plans to create two postgraduate Masters courses in first semester 2020, subject to approvals, that examine the technology proposals in theory and practice. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#2: Delft University of Technology https://www.tudelft.nl/en/delft-blockchain-lab/vacancies/vacancy/ By the way, you can still apply for these jobs! PhD Design and Implement Security Protocols for Blockchains Department/faculty: Faculty Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science Level: University Graduate Working hours: 38-40 hours weekly Contract: 4 Years Salary: 2222 - 2840 euros monthly (full-time basis) Goals of this collaboration are to design and implement security protocols for blockchains as well as developing effective and efficient solutions for testing and verification. In the first phase of the collaboration, we are hiring two Ph.D. students, who will be daily supervised by experts in both Software Engineering and Distributed Systems. The two PhD positions will focus on the following research areas: 1. AI-based Software Testing. The development, maintenance, and testing of blockchains involve many activities that are complex, expensive and error-prone. In this project, we aim to automate testing activities by leveraging artificial intelligence algorithms (e.g., by using search-based and machine learning algorithms). The goal is, for example, to assess the implementation of the consensus algorithms or testing blockchain applications against security attacks (e.g., double-spending attacks). Background: Software Testing, Optimization Search Algorithms, Blockchain (optional) Supervisors: Annibale Panichella, Arie van Deursen More information: apanichella.github.io, se.ewi.tudelft.nl/sbse.html  2. Real-World Blockchain Scalability and Security. Theoretical models and actual networks differ in a number of points. In this project, we aim to measure Ripple how is used in the wild. Based on these results, we want to develop more suitable algorithms. Potential examples include improved consensus algorithms, improved scalability, and designing privacy-preserving protocols. Background: Distributed Systems, Network Security, Blockchain Supervisors: Stefanie Roos, **** Epema More information: www.tudelft.nl/delft-blockchain-lab ,https://ds..ewi.tudelft.nl/ While the two PhD positions focus on two different areas, the candidates will collaborate closely. Besides, we expect the candidates to spend some time working at Ripple offices for deploying the developed solutions. Requirements - An excellent master's degree (or equivalent) in computer science, with a strong interest in at least one of the following ares: Software Testing, Distributed Systems, Network Security, Optimization and Artificial Intelligence. Experience with Blockchain is not mandatory but it is highly beneficial - Strong programming skills are required, preferably in C and/or C++ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#3: Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV) https://portal.fgv.br/en https://www.ripple.com/insights/on-campus-fundacao-getulio-vargas-is-training-brazils-next-gen-workforce-on-blockchain/ One of the most tangible effects of UBRI at FGV was a new Master’s Degree in Crypto Finance that Professor Rochman helped launch in 2017. The program is the first of its kind in Brazil. It emphasizes economics and finance and revolves around the core disciplines of math and statistics. It began with courses on pricing assets and derivatives and computer skills and has since expanded to include courses on crypto finance and crypto economics. These newer courses cover blockchain structures, consensus, and both micro-and-macro-economics in relation to these new technologies. The crypto finance course is specific to cryptocurrencies and delves into how crypto is viewed by other industries, alt-coins, and even how to build a new cryptocurrency. The program also features a course on cyber security. Professor Rochman says students in the course can learn about cryptographic security, various algorithms related to security, and how changes can impact end users or investors. Interestingly, he mentioned this course deals with physical security as well. For example, where to place computers, how to build and secure a data room, and other real-world challenges. Students taking part in all these courses have access to a crypto finance lab where they program with bitcoin and use both bitcoin script language and python. They can also take electives that allow them to specialize in crypto subjects related to data science, AI, Internet of Things, and other similar economics or business topics. The goal being to foster an understanding of and interest in the application of blockchain and crypto to adjacent industries. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#4: BerkleyHaas https://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/news-release/the-haas-school-of-business-at-the-university-of-california-berkeley-partners-with-ripple-to-accelerate-innovation-in-blockchain-cryptocurrency/ Berkeley Haas will receive a multi-year, multi-million-dollar gift from Ripple to build on the school’s leadership in advancing understanding of how these technologies are transforming multiple industries, and in educating leaders who will bring them to market. The school will develop a comprehensive program focused on blockchain and distributed systems, as well as cryptocurrency and digital payments. Eric van Miltenburg, Ripple’s senior vice president of Global Operations, said the initiative will help meet the growing demand for talent, learning, research, and project-based experience in blockchain and fintech more broadly. “Academia has traditionally been a critical driver of technical innovation. The University Blockchain Research Initiative is an acknowledgment of the vital importance of the unique role universities will play in advancing our understanding and application of cryptography and blockchain technology. It also speaks to the reality that university graduates will fuel a continually evolving and maturing financial marketplace and workforce,” https://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/blockchain-in-bloom-new-initiative-expands-courses-research-grants/ Bosun Adebaki, MBA 19, will spend time this spring researching the merits of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), a form of digital money that’s being tested by governments and central banks worldwide. His goal is to determine how central banks can use digital currencies to become more competitive, flexible, and efficient. Adebaki, a fellow with the Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator (https://xcelerator.berkeley.edu/ and https://blockchain.berkeley.edu/), is among eight graduate students and seven faculty members from across UC Berkeley who received the first round of grants from the Berkeley Haas Blockchain Initiative, a new program funded by a grant from blockchain industry leader Ripple. “It’s exciting to watch the Ripple UBRI Partnership gather momentum at Haas and across the Berkeley campus,” said Prof. Laura Tyson, faculty director of IBSI and former dean of the Haas School. “Individual companies and researchers can only accomplish so much. But by supporting a research network that spans across so many great universities and over five continents, Ripple is building a powerful program that could lead to important advances for not only the entire sector, but for the world.” Fifteen research grants awarded The first round of grants went to professors from Berkeley Engineering, the School of Information, and Haas, as well researchers from the Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity and the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing. Haas Prof. Paul Gertler received funding for research focused on adoption of digital payment systems by small businesses in emerging markets, and Asst. Prof. Giovanni Compiani received a grant to study what drives demand for cryptocurrencies among both individual and institutional investors. Blockchain courses taught by Adam Sterling, executive director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Business, and Ikhlaq Sidhu, chief scientist and faculty director of the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, also received grants. Eight students from Berkeley Law, Berkeley Engineering, the School of Information, the Department of Economics, and Haas each received smaller grants that will allow them to complete research projects within a semester. Haas students participating, in addition to Adebaki, include Kate Tomlinson, MBA 20, and a business consultant for Blockchain@Berkeley, who will be researching applications of blockchain within the energy sector. Her project will dive deeper into the specific challenges of financial reconciliation, hardware integration, and data sharing as they apply to the energy sector. Lauren Fu, MBA 19, will research ways to assign vehicle accident liability by collecting and storing accident data using blockchain—so that the data collected will be auditable and tamper-free. She256, co-founded by Sara Reynolds, BS EECS 21 and a Blockchain@Berkeley consultant, also received a grant to continue to develop the reach of the organization, a movement to increase diversity and break down barriers to entry in the blockchain space. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#5: University of Waterloo https://uwaterloo.ca/blockchain-research/news/new-funding-available-grad-students-researching-blockchain To help shape the future of blockchain technologies, a funding opportunity is available for master’s and doctoral candidates. Waterloo Engineering is offering fellowships, valued at up to $50,000 for master’s and $120,000 for PhD students, to undertake research in the blockchain field. Most of the funding for the fellowships is provided by Ripple, a San Francisco-based technology company that specializes in digital payments and blockchain. Recipients of the fellowships will join Waterloo researchers and others to advance research and innovation in blockchain, cryptography and digital payment systems. https://uwaterloo.ca/blockchain-research/researchers-and-areas-expertise a wide spectrum of research in the following areas: Applications in Severless Cloud Computing Blockchain for Social Good Consensus Protocols Cryptography and Security Data Mining and Machine Learning Distributed Systems Scalability Smart Contracts Testing and Verification https://uwaterloo.ca/graduate-studies-postdoctoral-affairs/awards/ripple-graduate-fellows The deadline to apply for a blockchain fellowship is February 1, 2019, with an anticipated start date of September 2019. Annual fellowships valued at $25,000 per year (for Master's students) and $30,000 per year (for Doctoral students) will be awarded to eligible graduate students registered full time in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Fellowships will be awarded on the basis of academic excellence (e.g., minimum of 80% cumulative average or in each of the last two full-time academic years) and through demonstrated interest in how the applicant has increased diversity in the subject area and related field of Blockchain and distributed systems, Cryptocurrency and digital payments, and Cryptography, particularly as it relates to these research areas. Preference will be given to female graduate students who meet the evaluation criteria and students with diverse experiences and backgrounds. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#6: University of Oregon https://business.uoregon.edu/news/leading-the-blockchain-revolution Formed in April 2018, Oregon Blockchain (https://www.oregonblockchaingroup.com/) is a student-run initiative with a goal of campus wide reach for education and innovation in the blockchain space. The group hopes to recruit students from across different disciplines to think about how blockchain will impact business and have a greater understanding of blockchain generally. In June, the University of Oregon announced it is one of 17 universities worldwide in the University Blockchain Research Initiative (https://around.uoregon.edu/content/ripple-partnership-puts-uo-elite-company-blockchain-research)—a multiyear, multi million-dollar program founded by Ripple to support academic research, technical development, and innovation in blockchain, cryptocurrency and digital payments. Oregon Blockchain benefits from this gift through conference and curriculum rollout support. Oregon Blockchain believes blockchain’s impact will be felt in six core areas: supply chain; financial markets; government; luxury assets, including sculptures, real estate, and collectible cars; advertising and journalism; and healthcare. UO faculty members will develop curriculum and guide research, while Ripple will lend the support of its staff as well as technical resources to the UO and its other partner schools. Ripple will also provide funds to support cybersecurity research for which faculty members from across campus can compete. Sventek can see natural collaborations between the new program and faculty in the Charles H. Lundquist College of Business and the School of Journalism and Communication, for example. The technology essentially tracks the virtual fingerprint of everyone who touches a specific item, when that occurred and any actions they may have taken with it. This includes everything from transferring funds between two parties to complete the purchase of goods to tracking the path a box of tomatoes takes from a farmer’s field to your neighborhood grocery store. “It may have come about because of bitcoin, but blockchain is becoming a very important technology not just for the financial industry but also as a way to track the movement of goods from one supplier to another,” Sventek said. “It’s a way to keep a supply chain secure through an entire distribution network.” The new hire will be a member of the Center for Cyber Security and Privacy, the UO’s lauded interdisciplinary unit that is sponsored by the National Science Foundation, National Security Agency and Department of Homeland Security. Sventek expects to launch the hiring process in the coming weeks. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#7: Korea University http://www.korea.ac.kr/user/boardList.do?boardId=365&siteId=en&page=1&id=en_060102000000&boardSeq=483066&command=albumView Sang Jin Lee, dean of the Graduate School of Information Security, said, “The partnership with Ripple gives us access to its extensive database, and this will be essential in the development of practical blockchain security technology. In addition, it will help to meet the increasingly high demand for blockchain experts.” The Blockchain Security Research Center of the Graduate School of Information Security at Korea University was established on May 1, 2018, for the purpose of conducting blockchain security research. Participating members include Dean Sang Jin Lee, Professor Ik Rae Jeong (https://koreauniv.pure.elsevier.com/en/persons/ik-rae-jeong/publications/ and https://scholar.google.co.kr/citations?hl=ko&user=cMn-vC0AAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate, and Professor Ji Won Yoon (https://koreauniv.pure.elsevier.com/en/persons/ji-won-yoon/publications/ and https://sites.google.com/site/securesiplab/members-1/professors and https://sites.google.com/site/securesiplab/projects Ji Won Yoon / Current Projects With fundings 2017.4~2020.12 Research on how to make homomorphic encryption be practical! 2017.12~2023.11 Research on statistical side channel analysis to find hidden keys in crypto systems. 2018.3~2020.12 Research on electromagnetic signal analysis for IoT security Voice presentation attack detection and authentication accuracy enhancements (Samsung Research), 2019.01. ~ 2019.12. Ik Rae Jeong/Research Field (http://pet.korea.ac.kr/#) 1 Block Chain Technology and Security 2 Identity-based Lightweight Authentication and Key Exchange Protocol Analysis 3 Biometric Security 4 Lattice based Cryptography 5 Cloud Security 6 Privacy-Preserving Data Mining(PPDM) 7 Data Base Security ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#8: The University of Texas at Austin / McCombs School of Business https://news.utexas.edu/2018/06/04/mccombs-school-part-of-50m-blockchain-innovation-program/ Ripple’s gift is a validation of our leadership in transformative technology innovation. It will enable us to grapple with some of the most pressing issues our rapidly evolving economic world has to offer.” In addition to financial resources, Ripple has also committed to providing McCombs with strategic guidance and technical resources as needed. “Our support of McCombs is an acknowledgment of the important role the school has the potential to play in advancing our understanding and application of cryptography and blockchain technology. Much of the enthusiasm and activity to date around blockchain is disconnected from real use cases that result in clear customer benefits,”. “While Ripple won’t dictate research parameters, we are excited to play a role in helping to support projects that explore increasingly useful applications of blockchain and cryptocurrencies.” RIPPLE CTO DAVID SCHWARTZ VISITS CAMPUS (MARCH 14, 2019) https://www.mccombs.utexas.edu/centers/blockchain/conference (video link to youtube, see below) https://twitter.com/search?q=%40UTexasMcCombs%20schwartz&src=typd https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=OWyQc0vSY6o (51 minute video, check it out!) Ripple CTO David Schwartz visited campus to discuss blockchain research with both faculty and students. During his stay, he was interviewed by McCombs faculty member Tej Anand and shared not only his personal journey to blockchain, but also his excitement about the blockchain space in general. https://www.ripple.com/insights/on-campus-professor-cesare-fracassi-on-university-of-texas-austins-expanding-blockchain-initiative/ (GOOD ARTICLE, worth your time…) Professor Cesare Fracassi, the director of this initiative at the University’s new Center for Analytics and Transformational Technologies, the ultimate goal is to leverage UBRI to accelerate what he sees as lagging understanding of blockchain in academia. He believes students will be best set up to advance blockchain innovation after graduation. In recent years, he has observed a growing interest amongst students in fintech, and especially blockchain, as evidenced by their eager participation in related coursework and the founding of a graduate blockchain society. This unique combination of existing blockchain coursework, dynamic leadership and student engagement make UT Austin ripe for further blockchain exploration, and a perfect home for UBRI. At the Center and within his courses, Professor Fracassi touches on three main topics: machine learning and AI, Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain. He pointed out that each of these technologies is at a different stage of development within industry, with blockchain being earliest in its adoption and in a proof-of-concept phase. UBRI program outcomes at UT Austin should be to advance blockchain beyond this initial phase by helping students learn about the underlying technology and its potential applications in the real world — so they can better separate the hype from the reality. He says that as academics, they do not have businesses at stake and so can cast a more critical eye on the space. A subject like blockchain spans multiple topics such as science, engineering and law, while also having application in distinct industries such as finance, identity and healthcare. Its study allows the University to provide students with exposure to a variety of colleges within UT Austin. The addition of funds through UBRI has allowed Professor Fracassi and the Center to expand the range of students taking this blockchain-related coursework. This fall, the university expanded course offerings to include MBA, graduate level business analytics and computer science, and undergrad students. He expects about 200 students enrolling in these classes in the spring semester. The MBA, CompSci and undergrad courses cover much of the same ground, but each group has distinct needs and interests. For example, business students are more interested in the applications of blockchain, while computer science students are more focused on the technical coding elements. Beyond just offering these new classes, UBRI funds will allow for a new fintech-focused track, the addition of more faculty to focus on the topic, and more professional development and subject matter expertise among existing faculty. All of this is geared to funding three UBRI program goals: support for research, support for teaching, and outreach to the community in Austin and Texas more broadly. UBRI will also allow Professor Fracassi to lead more university-wide research into blockchain. He is currently spearheading an effort to review proposals from students and faculty across campus that are interested in receiving funds for blockchain research projects. He is enthusiastic about UBRI because it allows UT Austin to jumpstart their program and to work in tandem with other universities in the UBRI program. Ultimately, he hopes to have the Center operational and research projects funded within the next six months. By year two or three, he envisions having fully embedded blockchain into the University and its coursework as machine learning is now. He acknowledges that blockchain remains niche today, but his goal is to make it core to the University — in a way that reflects its reach and use in the real world. https://www.mccombs.utexas.edu/Centers/Blockchain The Blockchain Initiative at Texas McCombs has three main goals: (i) to support faculty and graduate students research on blockchain across colleges at the University of Texas at Austin; (ii) to teach students the main concepts related to blockchain, cryptocurrency, and digital payments; (iii) to be the hub of knowledge for external relations with industry practitioners, policymakers, and media. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/08/13/rising-profile-blockchain-academe Even as private industry is increasingly supporting blockchain research, very little government funding is being made available, said Cesare Fracassi, associate professor of finance at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. Many of the companies providing financial support are small start-ups, but more established blockchain companies such as Ripple are starting to step up. Fracassi called this a “big deal” and noted that companies don’t often hand out unrestricted gifts in underfunded research areas. The money will allow Fracassi and colleagues to hire additional staff and “jump-start” blockchain-related research. A call for proposals will open this fall. Because blockchain was developed by industry and not in academia, university researchers have been “struggling to catch up,” said Fracassi. Blockchain technology has been around for almost a decade, but it’s only in the last couple of years that universities have begun researching it. Now academics can play an important role in developing blockchain technology, he said. “Blockchain was discovered and developed by practitioners who focus on the short-term business applications, but academics have the luxury of thinking more long term,” he said. Bringing together academics from multiple disciplines can help develop new ways of thinking about blockchain technology, Fracassi said. And because many people singing the praises of blockchain are invested in it succeeding, academics can bring more objectivity to the research, he said. “We can treat it as a scientific experiment and figure out if it’s a good technology or not,” he said. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#9: CSAIL @ MIT https://cap.csail.mit.edu/index.php/members/initiatives/fintechcsail (Ripple mentioned as one of the initiative members at the end of this site) FinTech@CSAIL brings together industry, thought leaders, innovators, academics, disruptive technology development, and startup companies that are reinventing global financial services. Through FINTECH@CSAIL, we work closely with industry partners in leveraging innovation from cutting edge research to develop the next generation of impactful technologies that will open up new business models, broaden access, gain new data insights, and improve security. Our research will focus on several key areas across CSAIL: Advanced Data Analytics Artificial Intelligence Cybersecurity/Secure Computation Financial Policy Machine Learning/Pattern Recognition Natural Language Processing (NLP)/Speech Recognition/Conversational Engines Privacy/Anonymity Replacement Technologies and Legacy Systems Risk Management Robotics Trusted Shared Public Ledger Systems This breadth of research uniquely positions CSAIL to address a wide variety of challenges in the space. FinTech@CSAIL will include the world-class faculty of MIT CSAIL, who have pioneered the fields of secure computation, machine learning, artificial intelligence, data analytics, and risk management. The goal is to advance the state-of-the-art in collaboration with select industry partners to address the hardest problems facing the finance industry today. http://web.mit.edu/webcast/csail/fintech/ (July 2018) 10:30am Fintech@CSAIL Members Talks, Ripple – Evan "ALL THE MONEY" Schwartz, Engineer (the video seems to be removed on this site but @BankXRP got us covered, so here you go folks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wt-9ZQtyIec) https://cap.csail.mit.edu/index.php/members/jobs CSAIL Alliance members may post full-time, part-time, or internship positions available to CSAIL students I don’t see anything related to Ripple (maybe the position is already filled in by now, only open positions are shown) but it’s nice to see what “others” like CitiGroup are looking for when recruiting ;). I would encourage Ripple to do their next “ON CAMPUS” series here! Why? Because MIT rocks and because there’s actually very little info regarding the UBRI initiative @ MIT site. No announcement on their website, nothing major when searching for ripple or ubri. “FinTech” search term finally revealed something. It’s like there’s some kind of secrecy about all this. You really have to dig deep to find anything on MIT and CSAIL website…Team Ripple, are you listening? Off we go to MIT, not even asking, just telling you! https://www.ripple.com/insights/ripple-introduces-the-university-blockchain-research-initiative/ As part of UBRI, Ripple is also participating in MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab’s new FinTech initiative made up of a nearly a dozen companies across the financial services industry to work with groups of CSAIL’s 116+ researchers on topics like blockchain, cryptocurrencies, cybersecurity and global payments. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#10: CITP at Princeton University https://citp.princeton.edu/citp-joins-ripples-university-research-collaboration-to-accelerate-innovation-in-blockchain-cryptocurrency/ ….commitment from Ripple to support research and fund graduate fellowships, postdoctoral fellows and visiting scholars. In addition to financial resources, Ripple has also committed to collaborating with university partners by providing strategic guidance and technical resources as needed. CITP and Ripple anticipate that, in keeping with CITP’s interdisciplinary nature, this initiative will engage students and faculty from a wide range of academic fields and backgrounds to produce interesting research and technical developments. In addition, the company and CITP hope the increase in knowledge sharing through this collaboration will fuel innovation and deepen understanding of blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies and their uses in the real world. https://citp.princeton.edu/publications/cryptocurrencies/ Just to give you an idea what they were/are researching… https://www.ripple.com/insights/ripple-introduces-the-university-blockchain-research-initiative/ For example, as the regulatory conversation continues to evolve in the public sector, the Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) at Princeton University is creating an UBRI program that will study the policy impact of cryptocurrencies and blockchain in the U.S. and around the world. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#11: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill / Kenan-Flagler Business School https://college.unc.edu/2018/06/blockchain/ and https://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/news/unc-kenan-flagler-selected-to-be-part-of-50-million-blockchain-research-initiative-by-ripple/ “UNC Kenan-Flagler and the Kenan Institute are uniquely qualified to be part of this global initiative,” said Greg Brown, professor of finance and director of the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at UNC Kenan-Flagler. Brown will co-lead the initiative with Ghysels. “Our research focus has always been around real-use cases that result in clear benefits to businesses and society, particularly with respect to cutting-edge technologies. This partnership with Ripple to discover useful applications of blockchain and cryptocurrencies is a logical extension of our efforts.” The UNC professors ( Greg Brown (https://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/faculty/directory/gregory-brown/) and Eric Ghysels (http://eghysels.web.unc.edu/) will continue to build a comprehensive program focusing on the role of new technologies, specifically blockchain, cryptocurrency and cybersecurity, to transform finance and economics, computer science and related fields. By doing so, UNC Kenan-Flagler will help prepare the next generation of business leaders, entrepreneurs, computer scientists and other professionals who will develop and apply the technologies and business practices. https://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/recruiters-companies/ The school will utilize this support from Ripple for curriculum development, research and project-based work, as well as entrepreneurship-related topics. The UNC Kenan-Flagler Kenan Institute for Private Enterprise also recently launched Rethinc Labs (https://kenaninstitute.unc.edu/rethinc/) in conjunction with these efforts. Rethinc Labs will focus on the strategic implementation of machine learning to real-world business needs. https://kenaninstitute.unc.edu/rethinc/ml/index.php/fintech/ (team ripple/binance was visiting…) 24 January 2019, Catherine Coley (hello Binance, when gateway ;)?), Head of XRP Institutional Liquidity, Ripple (https://www.kenaninstitute.unc.edu/blog/index.php/future-of-fintech-symposium-tackles-blockchain-cryptocurrency/) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#12: The University of Pennsylvania PENN/ Wharton School + Penn engineering https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/cryptocurrency-collaboration The two schools (https://www.seas.upenn.edu/ and https://www.wharton.upenn.edu/) have launched The Ripple Project at Penn, funded by Ripple, the blockchain-based global payment company. Ripple will finance a fellowship and research projects as part of its University Blockchain Research Initiative, which harnesses the education, research, and innovative tools that universities offer and apply them to blockchain technology and applications. With a newly established Wharton-Engineering dual-degree program, the Ripple Fellowship will support select MBA-MS candidates to work on blockchain or cryptocurrency projects. “Blockchain is a major point of intersection between business and engineering,” says Kevin Werbach, associate professor of legal studies and business ethics at Wharton. “We plan to research a broad range of topics in in this field, ranging from privacy to smart contract design to regulatory questions to creating trust in decentralized environments.” https://mba.wharton.upenn.edu/wharton-engineering-dual-degree-program/ The Ripple Fellowship: this term gift was established to support students in the Wharton/Engineering dual-degree program, with a preference given to those interested in block-chain and cryptocurrency and special consideration given to women and underrepresented minorities. This fellowship is available to up to four students per year. https://www.ripple.com/insights/author-kevin-werbach-previews-new-book-the-blockchain-and-the-new-architecture-of-trust/ Team Ripple: Tell us more about your work at Wharton, one of the schools participating in Ripple’s University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI). How has your role as a professor informed your work as an author? Werbach: I study how technology impacts business, law, and society. Most professors focus on a narrow area, but I’ve always had an interdisciplinary interest in emerging trends. So I’ve done research (and built courses) on Internet and telecommunications policy, gamification, law and ethics of big data, and now blockchain. I view teaching as a form of learning, and vice-versa. It takes discipline to synthesize a new area, identify the important parts, and develop frameworks to convey them. You’re basically creating a field out of a collection of data points. So, researching blockchain and cryptocurrencies for my academic writing, developing The Blockchain and the New Architecture of Trust, and creating courses were all part of the same process. Team Ripple: What interests your students about blockchain and digital asset technology? Werbach: I teach undergraduate and MBA business students, as well as some students from elsewhere in the university (such as engineers). Many are interested in gaining job skills that will provide a competitive advantage in building their careers. Some have backgrounds in specific areas like finance or healthcare, where they can see opportunities for blockchain-based solutions. Some have been trading cryptocurrencies for investment purposes, and want to see the bigger picture. Many are just curious about an area they read about a lot in the media but don’t fully understand. They want to dig in and learn what’s real in the space. https://giving.wharton.upenn.edu/penn-launches-strategic-collaboration-with-ripple-to-accelerate-innovation-in-blockchain-and-cryptocurrency/ Ripple’s financial donation to the University will support cross-disciplinary faculty research, financial aid for graduate students, and a broad range of educational programs. The Ripple Project will enable faculty research at both Wharton and Penn Engineering to unlock the full potential of blockchain to inform the creation of truly valuable solutions in the marketplace. “Here at Penn, there is tremendous excitement and initiative around blockchain among faculty and students,” said Vijay Kumar, the Nemirovsky Family Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science. “By collaborating with Ripple, we will answer crucial questions about blockchain’s capabilities, applications, and security, and we will develop a deeper understanding of the many emerging protocols built over blockchain. This level of knowledge is key to the technology’s future success.” “Blockchain represents the fusion of technology and finance spanning schools and disciplines well beyond Wharton” said Geoffrey Garrett, Dean of the Wharton School. “The Ripple Project will transform the way our students and faculty look at blockchain and its potential to change the world. We are thrilled to welcome Ripple’s collaboration as we prepare future leaders who will shape the future of how this dynamic technology is developed to transform fields as diverse as finance, logistics, and healthcare.” To harness the initiative of students, the insights of new research, and the power of the Penn network in this field, the Ripple Project will also provide learning opportunities both inside and outside of the classroom. Ripple will support student-organized events, such as the Penn Blockchain Conference which brings together the Penn and Philadelphia blockchain communities; the development of new curricular offerings that bridge business and technology; and events, workshops, and lectures that promote engagement between industry, students, and faculty. Team Ripple @ PENN… https://twitter.com/Ripple/status/1081305279638040576 (Ripple’s Craig DeWitt, January 2019). https://mackinstitute.wharton.upenn.edu/2018/ripple-asheesh-birla/ (podcast, August 2018) http://pennblockchain.com/conference-2019 ; April 2019, Marjan Delatinne, Global Head of Banking, Ripple https://www.ripple.com/insights/ripple-introduces-the-university-blockchain-research-initiative/ At The University of Pennsylvania, UBRI is supporting select MBA-MS candidates each year in a newly established Wharton-Engineering dual-degree program. This funding aims to prioritize students working on blockchain or cryptocurrency. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#13: University College London (UCL) https://www.ucl.ac.uk/campaign/news/2018/jun/ucl-partners-ripple-accelerate-innovation-blockchain-cryptocurrency Research will focus on three main streams including: technological innovation of distributed ledger technologies, business applications and socio-economic risks, legal and regulatory implications of distributed ledger technologies. UCL is the only UK university involved in the program of 12 institutions including MIT, Princeton and Berkeley. Established in 2016, UCL CBT (http://blockchain.cs.ucl.ac.uk/) is the largest centre on blockchain technologies in the world which counts more than one hundred research associates. http://blockchain.cs.ucl.ac.uk/industry-engagement/ (Ripple is their strategic partner) UCL CBT is a multilateral innovation platform, designed around industry and policymakers’ needs. Our academic expertise allows us to produce cutting-edge Blockchain solutions for industry, start-ups and regulators across a variety of sectors. Key services include project-based consulting, extensive database sharing and training programs for professionals. https://electiconsulting.com/fintech-summer-school-limassol-cyprus/ FinTech Summer School brings the world-renowned expertise of the UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies (UCL CBT), together with Electi Academy to present some of the the foremost thinkers in FinTech technologies to equip you with the INSIGHT, NETWORK and the TOOLs to guide your organisation on how to deal with disruptive emergent technologies. This course is designed to provide you with a framework for evaluating blockchains, both through use of technology and business applications and from a legal and regulatory perspective. Day 1 (Blockchain/DLTs and FinTech Applications): Learn from the experts regarding different DLT frameworks (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Corda, Hyperledger Fabric, Ripple, Stellar), low-level architecture of a Blockchain and its cryptographic related parts and discuss legal and regulatory aspects and challenges behind Blockchain, DLTs and Smart-Contracts. In addition, discuss how to use tokenisation as an alternative method for financing and discuss different methods of crowdfunding such as ICO, IEO, STO etc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#14: University of Luxembourg https://www.luxembourgforfinance.com/news/ripple-partners-with-university-of-luxembourg-for-blockchain-research-initiative/ will determine their own research topics and priority areas of focus, while also partnering with Ripple to: Collaborate on research and technical development that will stimulate widespread understanding and innovation in blockchain. Create new curriculum to meet high student demand for learning about blockchain, cryptocurrency and other FinTech topics. Stimulate ideas and dialogue among students, faculty, technologists and business leaders on topics of shared interest. In Europe, the University of Luxembourg and Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands are building a new blockchain research program inside their Departments of Computer Science and Engineering with the help of UBRI. https://wwwen.uni.lu/university/news/latest_news/university_joins_ripple_blockchain_research_on_micropayments (April 2019, a gold mine of info) Ripple’s donation will support research to develop the network communications necessary for micropayments, which promise to change the way we consume content on the Internet. “Users currently pay for web content either through subscriptions or with their data, through exposure to advertising,” says Prof. Radu State, who is leading the research at the University’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Security Reliability and Trust (SnT) (https://wwwen.uni.lu/snt). “There’s currently no cost effective, practical way for people to pay per second to listen to music, access quality journalism or watch a film. But micropayments will allow us to pay as we consume, using tiny fractions of a cent that don’t impact our budget.” Prof. State and his team intend to make such micropayments a reality through Interledger, an open suite of protocols for sending money directly over the Internet, regardless of currency. Interledger uses a network of “connectors” – each making exchanges in at least two crypto or fiat currencies – to allow people to route money seamlessly across the Internet and across financial barriers. For the money to find the cheapest route from source to destination, however, thousands of connectors will need to exchange continuous information about their exchange fees and liquidity. One of SnT’s contributions will be to define how connectors exchange this information dynamically, allowing millions of payments per second to take the cheapest route through the network. “Connectors will make money by playing on exchange rates, and since cryptocurrencies are highly volatile we need to ensure that the network copes with this inherent instability,” says State. The possibility of sending money as easily as we send data has major implications for the way we pay for content on the Internet. “With the Internet, we send data to one another regardless of whether we are on wifi, broadband or DSL,” says Jean-Louis Schiltz, Honorary Professor at SnT. “With the support of Ripple, SnT’s aim is to put the network communications in place to achieve the same thing with money, whether we work in euros, dollars or one of the hundreds of cryptocurrencies.” Pierre Gramegna, Luxembourg’s Minister of Finance, comments: “In a world in which an ever increasing share of content consumption takes place online, SnT’s project on micropayments, based on Ripple’s Interledger technology, has the potential to significantly improve the way users pay for digital and online content. With the SnT celebrating its 10 year anniversary this year, this new project is yet more proof of the interdisciplinary centre’s important role in Luxembourg’s innovation ecosystem, including in the area of financial services.” “The team at the University of Luxembourg is working on core research topics, such as optimising Interledger routing and the design of Interledger connectors, to enable individuals to send payments over the Internet,“ said Evan Swartz, Co-Inventor of the Interledger Protocol and Lead Engineer at Xpring. “They have a unique combination of experience in traditional computer networking and blockchain technologies, and I’m excited to get more networking experts to work on Interledger.” “We are honored to partner with the University of Luxembourg as they are working to make micropayments a reality,” said Eric van Miltenburg, SVP of Global Operations at Ripple. https://wwwen.uni.lu/snt/partnership_program (Ripple = research partner) SnT is committed to fostering the production of innovative ideas, increasing the depth and breadth of the competence of, and facilitating research in collaboration with, established partners as well as new start-ups in the ICT industry. Through the partnership program, partners contribute to and influence the development of SnT at all levels. The partners have representation on the SnT Board where the centre's strategy is developed. The Industrial Advisory Board supports the strategy and operations of SnT. Research is conducted jointly in partnered projects where SnT and partners contribute know-how and resources to achieve common goals. The partnership program also allows research activity to be leveraged with public research funding through the European Framework programmes, European Space Agency, and the National Research Funding Agency (FNR). Industrial PhD student projects are an attractive form of collaboration with SnT. Together with a partner, a PhD student project is defined (3+1 years duration) which is of interest to the partner and scientifically appropriate for a thesis. Together, a suitable student is recruited and the project is often carried out both at the partner premises and at SnT. https://wwwen.uni.lu/snt/research/cryptolux CryptoLUX is a cryptology research group headed by Prof. Alex Biryukov (https://cryptolux.org/index.php/Alex_Biryukov). The CryptoLUX group forms part of the Laboratory of Algorithmics, Cryptology and Security (LACS) (http://lacs.uni.lu/). The mission of the CryptoLUX group is to define, conduct, and disseminate leading-edge research in cryptology (and closely related fields), and to pass the knowledge gained from research on to students and industry partners. CryptoLUX is one of the few academic research teams worldwide that possesses expertise across the full spectrum of cryptology, ranging from theoretical foundations to implementation aspects and applications. Our mission and objectives are devised in accordance with the three main goals of the University of Luxembourg, which are teaching, research and knowledge transfer at the highest international level. Members of CryptoLUX collaborate with top research groups around the world and participate in activities of ECRYPT (http://www.ecrypt.eu.org/), the European network of excellence in cryptology. Our current research projects cover a wide variety of topics including algorithm design (block ciphers, hash functions, etc.), cryptanalysis, communication security and anonymity, efficient implementations, side-channel attacks, and reverse engineering. Emerging information and communication technologies, such as cloud computing or the Internet of things, pose a number of unique challenges related to the design and implementation of cryptographic primitives, which has initiated a large of body of research in these areas. Nonetheless, the number of cryptanalytic attacks (both traditional ones as well as side-channel attacks) is steadily increasing, and many of these attacks have led to devastating security breaches with fatal consequences. We envision CryptoLUX to be in the forefront of an international research community that tackles these challenges and develops innovative solutions for complex security problems based on a solid cryptographic foundation. To achieve this, we strive for a greater understanding of how cryptosystems get broken (or otherwise fail) in the real world, how they can be designed and implemented to better resist attacks, and how they should be used to build secure systems and networks. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#15: University of Nicosia (UNIC) in Cyprus https://www.unic.ac.cy/ripple-and-university-of-nicosia-enter-into-multi-year-agreement-to-support-blockchain-research/ Ripple will be supporting three specific initiatives at UNIC: (1) Joining as founding corporate member of UNIC’s Institute For the Future (IFF) (https://www.unic.ac.cy/iff/), to support its groundbreaking work in blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies; (2) Funding the Ripple Graduate Fellowship at UNIC, to fund two new post-doc positions for the next three years, and; (3) Funding the Ripple Scholar Scheme at UNIC, offering an annual full scholarship for UNIC’s MSc in Digital Currency for the next five years. “UNIC has been at the forefront of teaching and research in the fields of cryptocurrency and blockchain since 2013, with a number of firsts in academia”, remarked Antonis Polemitis, CEO of the University of Nicosia. UNIC was the first university in the world to develop a cryptocurrency course (a MOOC followed by nearly 30,000 students to-date), as well as a full academic programme in the field (MSc in Digital Currencies). UNIC was also the first university in the world to publish academic certificates and diplomas to the blockchain, while it boasts one of the largest teams in academia working on blockchain and cryptocurrency research, development and teaching. The UNIC-Ripple agreement will be effective as of the academic year 2018-2019. https://twitter.com/nbougalis/status/1003701980244480000 Ripple's Nik Bougalis seemed excited on twitter (Cyprus roots?) https://twitter.com/MScDigital/status/1069539358250856449 On 27/11/18 the @Uni_of_Nicosia became the first university in Cyprus & the Mediterranean region to be added to Ripple's XRP ledger ecosystem under the trusted Unique Node List(UNL). This is another milestone that the University achieves as a contributor to the rise of Blockchain. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#16: Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT) https://www.ripple.com/insights/on-campus-iit-bombay-blockchain-applications/ (nice article!) Professor R.K. Shyamasundar says the study of blockchain will help nurture a coming generation of entrepreneurs comfortable with building applications at scale and across industries. As part of our discussion on IIT Bombay and its participation in Ripple’s University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI), he gave us a peek into the university’s work with a Ripple validator, blockchain related programs already underway on campus, and explained why the study of blockchain is so important to the future of business and daily life in the region. He believes that this will eventually result in a broad spectrum of blockchain applications that can govern several aspects of society with transparency, provenance and integrity. But in order for these applications to have real-world utility and acceptance, he says they must feature high levels of scalability and performance. He sees his job at IIT Bombay as instructing the coming generation of entrepreneurs on how to build these applications, and how to apply those aspects of scale and performance into new and broader distributed ledger applications beyond fintech. He believes a blockchain education centered around hands-on exposure to the technology will produce new research opportunities and innovative new applications. .... way to better integrate the study of blockchain across disciplines, provide students with exposure to live projects like running a validator and more effectively train the next generation of blockchain entrepreneurs. he cited the university’s Centre of Excellence. It serves as a natural home for UBRI at IIT Bombay because it’s already an inter-disciplinary arrangement bringing together faculty and curriculum from the schools of Management, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering. He said also that the Centres for Economic Policy and the Centre for Alternative Technologies for Rural Applications have begun to show interest in using UBRI to explore blockchain for their own specific use cases. In February, they hosted 200 participants from academia, industry and government for a workshop on Blockchain, distributed ledger technologies and related applications. this workshop and others like it are an output of an active cybersecurity student club that meets regularly and is fond of having undergrads challenge seniors on their research and findings in order to promote group learning. IIT Bombay operates their own XRP validator on campus. He says this is an effective way to expose the students to blockchain principals in practice and show them the design behind Ripple’s consensus algorithm. In total, there are 11 people—from both the faculty and student communities—working on the validator. Live for the past three months, Professor Shyamasundar said it has produced an enormous amount of data that is warehoused and currently being used to set up a full-history server at the university. He mentioned that some of his students have been inspired by the sheer amount of resulting data to develop new projects by applying artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning. Further, he thinks the data generated from this validator can lead in several new research directions, such as the privacy of transactions, AI or machine learning-based predictions about the XRP Ledger, and applications in healthcare or land management. He even mentioned that three undergraduate students are actively working in these areas. For Ripple specifically, he is interested to learn whether it’s possible to predict “trust paths” for transaction initiators and whether it’s possible under concurrent operations to scale up without deadlocking. He also said his work aims to achieve privacy by appropriate scheduling, wherein AI and machine learning techniques help identify a set of timed transactions that deplete some of the nodes on the path for a target. Beyond the many blockchain-related projects already underway at IIT Bombay, Professor Shyamasundar mentioned a near-term effort to explore the capabilities of digital asset transfer using XRP. In the longer-term, he would like to cement UBRI-funded research capabilities as critical for local fintech and government partners. He understands that the world is becoming more interdependent, with global workflows and supply chains creating an opening for distributed ledger technologies to be utilized for time and process improvements. By creating partnerships with private and government entities, he hopes to build a natural path for IIT Bombay students to become entrepreneurs. This use of data and research at IIT Bombay as preparation for the real world is timely for Professors Shyamasundar. He sees the proliferation of information systems in our daily lives, augmented by the use of mobile devices, as creating an enormous data ecosystem that can be monetized in new ways and lead to entirely new business models. But he also worries this intrusive data gathering and the race to monetize it is making people very anxious and skeptical of the cost versus benefit of sharing their own data. He believes that blockchain can help balance the scales and bring some symmetry to the collection and use of data. He sees this requiring blockchain variants far beyond today’s cryptocurrency applications that are custom-tailored to the task. http://iitb.ac.in/story/iit-b-partners-ripple The MoU was signed by Prof. Devang V. Khakhar, Director, IIT Bombay and Mr. Navin Gupta, Managing Director, Ripple. Speaking about the relevance of the association, Prof. Khakhar, said, “This is a partnership between a financial technology company and an academic institution, to promote greater understanding and utilization of blockchain, cryptocurrency, cryptography and related topics of mutual interest, and to foster a widespread adoption and innovation in these fields globally. The partnership will enable our faculty and students with novel opportunities for research and technology development in blockchain and cryptocurrency which will add value to the global blockchain ecosystem as well as emerging fields like FinTech. We look forward to the fruits of the collaboration in terms of the advancement of high quality research and development”. http://www.iitb.ac.in/alumni/en/newsletter-article/2018-11/center-excellence-blockchain-technologies As of now, the following faculty will be driving the R & D Efforts: Prof RK Shyamasundar ( CSE), Prof. G. Siva Kumar (CSE), Prof. Manoj Prabhakaran (CSE), Prof. Virendra Singh ( EE), Prof. Sarthak Gaurav (SJSOM), Prof. Vinay Riberio (CSE), and Dr. Vishwas Patil (CSE). Some of the topics of interest of the faculty include: theoretical foundations on scalability & performance tradeoffs, concurrent operations, permissioned ledgers and DLTs., robust smart contracts, security, privacy, anonymity, Crypto-currency &crypto-assets, DLT applications to land management, healthcare, IoT security etc. Interactions with the Ripple is going in establishing a Ripple Validator at IIT Bombay. Efforts are on to get excellent PhD students, interns and establish concrete interactions with FinTech efforts in India as well as institutions working on payment sytems and banking technologies. A workshop (https://isrdc.iitb.ac.in/blockchain/workshops/2019-iitb/) on applications of DLTs is planned for 4-5 Feb 2019 at IIT Bombay followed by a one day meeting at IDRBT, Hyderabad, for which participation from CSIRO (a leading Institute from Australia working on applications of Blockchain) has been confirmed. We expect participation from academia and industry for this workshop. https://isrdc.iitb.ac.in/blockchain/coe (Center of Excellence for Blockchain Research) The Center of Excellence for Blockchain Technologies at IIT-Bombay is established in collaboration with Ripple. The collaboration of IIT Bombay with Ripple provides us with novel opportunities enabling the testing and deployment of applications, and deliberation on future of finance. Broadly, it has the following synergy between ISRDC and Ripple: Create an excellent scientific, industrial, and innovative business climate in a very topical area of national and international significance. Attract students to do research in the frontier areas with practical applications. Cultivate an ecosystem of R&D in FinTech at IIT Bombay and provide a good attraction for industry and business houses to the Research Park at IIT Bombay. Enable concrete networking with the top institutions (like Stanford, MIT, et al), where other CoEs with Ripple's collaboration are established. Synergizing the on-campus expertise on blockchain technologies from the Departments of CSE, EE, and the SJM School of Management. The center maintains a validator node on Ripple Network. https://www.insightiitb.org/ripple-in-the-works/ https://isrdc.iitb.ac.in/blockchain/coe/areas.html Crypto-currency, crypto-assets Smart contracts testing, verification Consensus protocols Permissioned ledgers, DLTs Theoretical results Applications and case studies Security, privacy, anonymity Scalability, efficiency trade-offs https://isrdc.iitb.ac.in/blockchain/coe/openings.html Applications for TWO PhD Fellowships, instituted under the BCoE at IIT Bombay, are sought for research in areas like foundations of distributed systems, scalability of distributed ledger applications, cryptocurrencies, as well as various challenging applications in banking, healthcare, transport, etc. Prospective PhD candidates should have a strong background in Computer Science (a master or bachelor); and interest in at least one of the following areas: security & privacy applied cryptography distributed systems economics ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#17: International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Hyderabad https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/agency-wire/11176-iiit-hyderabad-to-partner-ripples-university-blockchain-research-initiative International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT-Hyderabad) is one of two from India . Prof P J Narayanan, Director, IIIT-Hyderabad said, "It's gratifying to see IIIT-H's research work being recognized through the UBRI, alongside some of the best universities in the world. We have always valued theoretical and applied research as well as industry connect from the very beginning. This program enables both and we are looking forward to contributing to the blockchain area." The International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIIT-H) is an autonomous research university founded in 1998 that focuses on the core areas of Information Technology, such as Computer Science, Electronics and Communications, and their applications in other domains through inter-disciplinary research with great social impact. Some of its research domains include Visual Information Technologies, Human Language Technologies, Data Engineering, VLSI and Embedded Systems, Computer Architecture, Wireless Communications, Algorithms and Information Security, Robotics, Building Science, Earthquake Engineering, Computational Natural Sciences and Bioinformatics, IT in Agriculture and e-Governance. Not much to be found, looks like another good candidate for the "on campus" series to follow up on. I'm assuming that they'll be collaborating with IIT at Bombay... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#18: Carnegie Mellon University https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2019/march/ripple-blockchain-partnership.html (March 2019) "This partnership with Ripple will take full advantage of CMU's culture of interdisciplinary innovation and our university-wide focus on issues at the intersection of technology and policy," said Ramayya Krishnan, dean of the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy The new program will help train and shape the next generation of business, public sector and nonprofit leaders; computer scientists; entrepreneurs; and other professionals to develop and apply these technologies and business practices for current and future use. The interdisciplinary work done by CMU on this initiative will leverage the expertise of CyLab, Carnegie Mellon's Security and Privacy Institute. (https://www.cylab.cmu.edu/) "The work that comes from this partnership will advance learning, pioneer innovation and catalyze thought leadership on blockchain, cryptocurrency, cybersecurity and other critical areas," said Param Singh, Carnegie Bosch Chair, Director of PNC Center for Financial Services Innovation and associate professor of business technologies at CMU. In addition to pursuing groundbreaking research and technical innovation, several partners will be hosting events to discuss topics ranging from blockchain to cryptography and cybersecurity to regulatory issues. Ripple's thrilled to support and participate in these vital conferences and workshops." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#19: Cornell Computer and Information Science (CIS) https://cis.cornell.edu/cis-partners-ripple-accelerate-innovation-blockchain-and-cryptocurrency Cornell CS Professor Andrew Myers, the faculty member supervising the project, said: “We are delighted to have the support of Ripple and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation for our work on developing a new framework for high-performance, interoperable blockchains.” UBRI#20: Duke University / Fuqua School of Business Nothing relevant and thus "on campus" candidate to check what's going on there...The only thing that I have to say is "Fuqua". Pronounce it as you wish. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#21: University of Kansas , School of Engineering (Brad Garlinghouse favorite UBRI :-)) http://news.ku.edu/2019/02/07/tech-firm-ripple-supports-blockchain-research-ku-2m-gift A $2 million gift, which will provide $400,000 a year for five years, will support research in the Information & Telecommunication Technology Center at the KU School of Engineering. KU will determine its own research topics and areas of focus. Ripple also will collaborate with students and faculty at KU by providing subject matter expertise and technical resources, as needed. “It’s a win all around: Students can do research and get practical application experience in blockchain, which is valuable technology training that everyone, including Ripple, wants to see, Ripple gift also will support the KU Blockchain Institute, a student-led organization that promotes the implications and applications of blockchain technology across the professional fields of engineering, business development and policymaking. https://www.ripple.com/insights/on-campus-university-of-kansas-emphasizes-interdisciplinary-blockchain-study-for-budding-entrepreneurs/ Across multiple conversations with Professor Perry Alexander, we explored the university’s deployment of a XRP Ledger validator, its cybersecurity-related research into blockchain with the NSA, and unique interdisciplinary projects in biodiversity and visual arts—all as part of Alexander’s hope to create the next generation of entrepreneurs. Professor Alexander fundamentally believes that the study of blockchain and other new technologies is the foundation to building the entrepreneurs and workforce of tomorrow. He observed that industries advance in new technologies as they hire workers that have studied these technologies more extensively and are more familiar with how to apply and manage them. That’s why he believes ubiquitous commercial applications for blockchain are still a generation of startups away. Current and future students need time to explore and manipulate blockchain—especially in the context of interdisciplinary study—so they are better attuned to how they can more widely commercialize the technology. He was adamant that while blockchain is a fascinating technology on its own, it requires people from across the vast spectrum of academia to make it effective. He pointed to his department’s own cybersecurity work as an example. It’s well known that one of the core security flaws in most systems is not technological but rather social in nature: consider the employee who misplaces a badge or password versus a deficiency in technology. One of the reasons Professor Alexander is so excited about the prospects for UBRI and why it has gained momentum so quickly at KU is because the university was already engaged in blockchain projects. He pointed to the business school’s student-run Blockchain Initiative as an example. (https://kublockchain.com/) Prior to the UBRI grant, Professor Alexander had also been working with his team to set up a XRP Ledger validator. As a NSA Lablet and research partner, his team wanted to set up the validator on campus to better understand the technology. He was particularly excited about using blockchain in this context because of its potential to move the responsibility for cyber security from the state to the community. In his words: “That’s a big deal.” As part of UBRI, KU intends to pursue more cybersecurity-related work with the NSA. If that happens, he envisions giving students and other faculty even more hands-on experience with the validator. He believes that blockchain has a lot to offer when it comes to identity and network resiliency—both fundamental components of cybersecurity. Ultimately, he imagines blockchain being a critical part of aggregated trust approaches that can more effectively manage the enormous scope of devices involved in the Internet of Things. Ripple and UBRI—he termed a “game changer” for KU. He hopes to use the grant to expose more students to the technology in novel ways. He says students are the best tech transfer mechanism, and that providing them with these opportunities and interactions is the reason a university exists. By showing them what blockchain makes possible, he hopes to influence the next generation to develop the next economy. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#22: Morgan State University https://news.morgan.edu/ripple-partnership/ The funds will underwrite a five-year academic partnership (https://www.morgan.edu/school_of_business_and_management/centers/fintech_center/about_us.html) bringing advanced education and research programs to the University. Through the efforts of the Center for the Study of Blockchain and FinTech Innovation (the Center) at Morgan’s Earl G. Graves School of Business and Management (https://www.morgan.edu/sbm), the University’s UBRI program will encompass the development of specialized curricula, expansion of academic courses, hosting of conferences and awarding of scholarships to faculty and students pursuing work in blockchain, cryptocurrency, digital payments and related topics. The Center will also serve as a funding hub for other Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) seeking to develop their own FinTech initiatives. https://www.morgan.edu/fintechcenter ...research projects that address the complex problems of blockchain technology as well as the development of specialized curricula, expansion of academic courses, hosting of conferences and awarding of scholarships to faculty and students pursuing work in blockchain technology, crypto-assets, digital payments, and related topics. The Center offers its programs in research and education to multiple disciplines including business and entrepeneurship; computer science; economics; engineering; information systems; law; and others. The Ripple grant will underwrite a five-year academic partnership bringing advanced education and research programs to the University. Team Ripple (Kahina van Dyke, short video, May 2019) https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=JmTfkYcuUjk https://www.morgan.edu/school_of_business_and_management/centers/fintech_center/research.html UBRI is interested in the following research topics. (https://www.morgan.edu/Documents/ACADEMICS/SCHOOLS/SBM/FinTech Center/documents/UBRI Research Problems.pdf) This is not a comprehensive list. Click here for a list of Research and Course Development projects funded for the Spring of 2019. (https://www.morgan.edu/Documents/ACADEMICS/SCHOOLS/SBM/FinTech Center/List of projects funded-1.pdf) !!!!!!!!!!!!!VERY INTERESTING, the WHOLE PDF GIVEN BELOW:!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (https://www.morgan.edu/Documents/ACADEMICS/SCHOOLS/SBM/FinTech Center/documents/UBRI Research Problems.pdf) The research statements below are a representative sampling of real-world problems that are top of mind for Ripple and the ILP/XRP ledger teams, as well as for the broader community working in blockchain, cryptocurrency and global digital payments. This list of topics is not intended to be prescriptive, but can be used as a resource for universities as they develop their own research strategies within the framework of the University Blockchain Research Initiative and beyond. This list is preliminary; the intent is to use it as a working document that can be modified based on university partner feedback and the introduction of new topics, both by Ripple and by university faculty and students. Consensus Can consensus protocols be built with block finality and asynchronous safety with littIe-0(N2)communication? What are possible attacks on Cobalt/ XRP LCP as described in respective papers? For example: frontrunning; What are possible mitigations? Data Science How would you graph and analyze biockchain transactions using wallet identification, transaction clustering, etc.? Decentralization What are useful ways to measure decentralization? What is the effective decentralization of the major assets in the digital space? Are there novel deanonymizing attacks on anonymity coins? Digital Asset Derivatives Are there any novel derivative structures on digital assets that can leverage cryptography/multiparty agreement protocols? Digital Asset Market Structure What are the best structures to incentivize price discovery and deep liquidity on distributed exchanges, where time-priority is poorly defined? What are ways of measuring the utility of digital assets in the market? How much should crypto-crypto trading volume be weighed compared with crypto-fiat volume? What are the best ways to measure the flow of fiat into and out of the digital asset ecosystem? What factors move or correlate with digital assets? Is the digital market a leading or trailing indicator for other asset classes? Distributed Systems Are there novel attacks on various cryptocurrencies that are cheap but possibly not incentive compatible (i.e., if I'm willing to pay some cost to attack the network, how small would that cost be?)? Given XRP's consensus mechanism, what are the most efficient ways to scale the ledger? Game Theory Are tokens isolated from fiat? Is there an incentive structure for cryptocurrencies that accounts for the fact that tokens aren't isolated from one another? Incentive Structures Evaluate the incentives in emerging blockchain networks (proof of work, Byzantine fault tolerant (XRP),etc.) on a variety of factors including: Network diversity and participation, Security, consolidation of decision making, etc. Infosec / Opsec What assumptions about the adversary are reasonable for blockchain consensus protocols (e.g., how important is safety/liveness under unbounded asynchrony? Is adaptive security really needed for PoS?) Market Liquidity What is the price impact of an order/execution on open order books? How does this evolve as markets become more liquid? Network Analyses- Non-Technical How do adoption curves take place globally (e.g. : December 2017 run-up in cryptocurrencies)? What adoption models make sense for the new digital asset class and where are we in terms of these models? How does Metcalfe¡¦s Law apply to global payment systems/networks? What is the strength of different digital asset ecosystems based on different network analyses? Network Analyses- Technical Given the trajectory of the internet, what network topology should be expected for lnterledger connectors? What can be learned from TCP congestion and flow control strategies for interledger transport protocols like STREAM? What are the implications of sending data over the interledger as a replacement for the internet itself? Could internet SDN controllers be repurposed for interledger? Large scale testing of interledger: How does interledger perform in large scale distributed simulations? How can privacy be preserved while sending micropayments through interledger (e.g. lnterledger VPNsor TOR over ILP)? Regulatory Impact on Digital Assets What is the overall regulatory landscape within the digital asset space and what is their impact on local/global perception of these new technologies? What are the potential downstream impacts (on banking, exchanges, payment companies, etc.) of different regulatory stances of major economies (India, Japan, Brazil, US, etc.)? Software Engineering How would offline payments be implemented for interledger? (Similar to how credit cards do Offline payments) What architecture or tools (FPGAs) could be used to build super-fast interledger connectors? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#23: Northeastern University https://www.northeastern.edu/ , can't give you anything else unfortunately...Maybe we'll find more what they plan to do here in one of the "on campus" posts from Ripple. Let me know if you can find some more info about UBRI#23. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#24: Tsinghua PBCSF, Institute for Fintech Research, Tsinghua University (THUIFR), China http://fintechlab.pbcsf.tsinghua.edu.cn/english/common/main/newsDetail?id=643 (January 2019) Partnering with Ripple, Institute for Fintech Research, Tsinghua University (THUIFR) recently launched Blockchain Technology Research Scholarship Program (BRSP) for excellent graduate students in China in 2019. Based on the research resources and achievements of THUIFR and supported by Ripple, BRSP will focus on international regulatory policies and the development of blockchain technology. Students who are admitted to the program would be involved in cutting-edge research on global regulations and policies on blockchain technology, and would have opportunities to participate in corporate visits and events. The program’s goal - to provide students with opportunities in blockchain research - closely aligns with that of Ripple’s University Blockchain Research Initiative; we’re thrilled to support THUIFR in this endeavor and look forward to its launch.” About THUIFR: Based on the academic and industrial research achievement accomplished by Fintech Lab since 2012, THUIFR is jointly established by PBC School of Finance, Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences, School of Software and Law School at Tsinghua University in 2017. Aiming to provide world-class research and practical guidance for fintech industry, THUIFR is committed to becoming a leading platform for interdisciplinary research, policy advisory, exchange and cooperation, and innovative incubation to make contributions to build a healthy, stable and sustainable fintech ecosystem in China. http://fintechlab.pbcsf.tsinghua.edu.cn/english/common/main/newsDetail?id=645 (March 2019) Blockchain Technology Research Scholarship Program（BRSP） was successfully launched at Tsinghua PBCSF on March 9. Professors from THUIFR, and the Research Center for Blockchain, THUIFR gave those students who are successfully admitted into BRSP an overview of THUIFR, the Research Center of Blockchain, and the program, and mostly importantly, shared with them their research on blockchain technology. Research Center for Blockchain conducts field research on global blockchain industry, with a focus on industry development, and works very closely with regulatory bodies and the industry. Eric van Miltenburg from Ripple, the partner and sponsor of BRSP, said he was very excited to be here celebrating together with us about the official launch of BRSP. He mentioned THUIFR is the first academic entity in China to join UBRI. Partnering with Ripple, THUIFR recently launched Blockchain Technology Research Scholarship Program (BRSP) for excellent graduate students in China earlier this year. Based on the research resources and achievements of THUIFR and supported by Ripple, BRSP is focusing on international regulatory policies and the development of blockchain technology. I would encourage you to read the news from 2019 (http://fintechlab.pbcsf.tsinghua.edu.cn/english/common/main/news). There are some very interesting articles there (inter-banking, regulations) to see what they plan to do with this newly founded Blockchain Technology Research Scholarship Program. Also take a peak at http://fintechlab.pbcsf.tsinghua.edu.cn/english/common/main/research ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#25: University of Michigan https://news.umich.edu/cryptocurrency-innovation-u-m-to-establish-fintech-collaboratory/ https://record.umich.edu/articles/u-m-establish-fintech-collaboratory-research-cryptocurrency Financial technology research and education at the University of Michigan will get a boost with $1 million from Ripple's University Blockchain Research Initiative. With the funds, U-M will establish the FinTech Collaboratory to build multidisciplinary curricula in the booming area, as well as engineering and business use cases for cryptocurrencies in new applications such as smart cities. The FinTech Collaboratory will be an interdisciplinary forum that includes engineering, business, public policy and economics. The Ripple gift will be housed in the Center for Smart Infrastructure Finance. The collaboratory and the center are interdisciplinary initiatives among the College of Engineering, Ross School of Business, Ford School of Public Policy, and the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. “The most important thing this funding allows us to do is integrate the engineering and data science with finance and policy to craft financial models to fund infrastructure, developing models to close the infrastructure finance gap,” said Peter Adriaens, director of the Center for Smart Infrastructure Finance and professor of civil and environmental engineering and finance. “These solutions will democratize access to infrastructure and level the playing field between the rich and poor.” The Center for Smart Infrastructure Finance aims to change the way infrastructure is funded by harnessing the value of the data infrastructure is capable of providing. It is advancing new business and investment models for efficient capital deployment toward smart and resilient infrastructure systems. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#26: Univeristy of Sao Paolo (USP), Brasil https://www.ripple.com/insights/featured/ripple-officially-launches-operations-in-brazil/ Ripple’s efforts in Brazil go beyond delivering software solutions to financial institutions. Consistent with its history as a mission-driven company, last year Ripple launched the University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI) to support academic research, technical development and innovation in blockchain, cryptocurrency and digital payments. Ripple committed resources to top tier Brazilian universities, including University of São Paulo and Fundação Getulio Vargas. The company is working with over fifteen professors at USP and FGV to help support academic research and technical development across disciplines including law, business and engineering. “Ripple believes that academic institutions will play a key role driving the blockchain industry forward. USP and FGV are innovative, forward-thinking institutions that are investing in blockchain research to explore new use cases and help prepare students for future jobs in this space” https://jornal.usp.br/institucional/usp-e-ripple-fazem-parceria-para-inovacao-em-blockchain/ (google translate suggested unless you know Portuguese) The University will receive funding to promote research projects on blockchain technology concepts and applications and to develop training material, courses and events. USP's Blockchain Research Initiative, supported by Ripple, brings together researchers from different fields of knowledge and research units, such as the Polytechnic School (Poli), the Faculty of Law (FD), the Faculty of Economics, Administration and Accounting (FEA) and the Institute of Mathematics and Statistics (IME), in addition to having the support of the Information Technology Superintendence (STI) ”, explains the advisor of the Dean of Research and one of the project coordinators at USP, Antonio Mauro Saraiva. “We are very excited to develop interdisciplinary studies and strengthen collaboration between these institutes through the UBRI partnership,” added Poli professor and also coordinator of the initiative, Marcos Antonio Simplício. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#27: Georgetown university Not much on https://www.georgetown.edu/ ... Moving on to #28. Again, if you have more info regarding this university, feel free to add it below. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#28: National University of Singapore (NUS Computing) https://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/news/news-media/2888-2019-ripple-ubri/ https://www.cio.com/article/3340128/nus-joins-ripples-university-blockchain-research-initiative.html Though many fintech hubs such as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Australia are located in the Asia Pacific region, our blockchain education initiatives and general curricula surrounding emerging technology tend to lag behind our neighbours of the West,” Associate Professor Keith B Carter of the NUS School of Computing told CIO Asia. Aside from the NUS, other top-ranking institutions in the country, including Nanyang Technological University and Singapore Management University, have launched blockchain-related courses and certifications. To mitigate the country’s tech skills gap, continuing education centres such as NTUC LearningHub have followed suit, offering short-term classes and certifications catering to professionals looking to pivot their careers and enter the tech sector NUS School of Computing is playing both a research and consultative role and actively invite innovative companies to look at new technologies, focusing specifically on how these technologies enable them to solve existing challenges while keeping cybersecurity implications in mind. “Universities are home to knowledge and innovation, playing a pivotal role in shaping tomorrow’s workforce and are natural settings within which the boundaries of technology can be explored. By exposing students to blockchain in its early days better prepares them for a future where its use will be ubiquitous and as educators, we have the responsibility to encourage them to act with innovation and experimentation in mind, Some of the initiatives taking place at NUS School of Computing include a student-led Fintech Society which allows undergraduate and postgraduate students and PhD candidates to get together and look at some of the challenges that companies are experiencing today and how technological innovations such as blockchain can help to solve them. Though nascent, blockchain builds on existing areas of computer science and has been strengthened and developed in universities around the world. For the NUS School of Computing, this culminated in the Cryptocurrency, Strategy, Techniques, and Algorithms Centre (CRYSTAL Centre) while simultaneously supporting projects and protocols such as Zilliqa that have gone on to become some of the industry’s frontrunners. https://blockchain.comp.nus.edu.sg/ and https://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~dbsystem/paper.html (some of their research (papers) e.g. https://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~hungdang/papers/sharding.pdf ...) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#29: Stanford university https://cbr.stanford.edu/ and https://cbr.stanford.edu/research.html (e.g. The Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP)) Stanford computer scientists have founded the Center for Blockchain Research, an initiative dedicated to researching and understanding a technology that promises to fundamentally change how people and companies make deals and complete financial transactions over the internet. Led by Dan Boneh and David Mazières (kinda like Dave but then for Stellar) , both professors of computer science, the center’s inaugural faculty will also include Alex Aiken, David Dill, John Mitchell, Tim Roughgarden and law school faculty Joe Grundfest. https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/sites/gsb/files/publication-pdf/study-blockchain-impact-moving-beyond-hype.pdf Study made in collaboration with RippleWorks (http://www.rippleworks.org/who-we-are/, I see Chris Larsen as a co-founder...) They like to analyze securities (with fascination for XRP too so it seems) at Stanford Law : http://securities.stanford.edu/filings-documents/1066/RLI00_01/201861_f01c_18CV03286.pdf (stumbled upon this) https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/faculty/voices/susan-athey (just stumbled upon, worth reading) Athey, a professor of economics at Stanford Graduate School of Business, seeks to understand the impact of marketplaces and digital platforms on the economy, touching disparate fields such as timber auctions, virtual currencies, the news media, and online advertising. By marrying machine-learning techniques with statistical tools to analyze large and novel data sets, she helps answer thorny questions about cause and effect. Researching and designing auction-based marketplaces has been a fixture throughout Athey’s career. She, for example, developed the auction-based pricing system that has been used to price most of the timber in British Columbia for more than a decade and that helped resolve a major trade dispute with the U.S. Athey developed a much broader insight from studying timber auctions: “The rules of the game have an obvious short-term effect on how prices get set and how business gets allocated,” Athey says. “But the impact of the market design on who participates is more important.” In other words, how does the design influence the overall mix of small and large bidders in an auction? Understanding that is more valuable than understanding how they behave once they get there, Athey says. Athey serves on the board of a number of companies that operate in a wide range of industries, including travel (Expedia), finance (Ripple), and dog-sitting (Rover). What is it about those companies that piques her interest as an economist? For Ripple — whose mission is to move money instantly, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, around the world — it’s the opportunity to address the frictions in global financial transactions. “Those frictions are basically a huge tax on the global economy, particularly for parts of the world that are not well-connected,” Athey says. “You have people working all week to remit money home, and then 20% of that money gets burned in the remittance process. Or people are trying to do business from Africa but can’t move money in less than 10 days or two weeks. It’s very regressive and very inefficient. So it’s exciting to be part of a company that has a real chance of making a dent in that problem.” https://twitter.com/Susan_Athey/status/1099762139617669120?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1099762139617669120&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fcoingape.com%2Fripple-lead-on-question-student-seeks-clarification-promoting-xrp-over-bitcoin%2F Then a student complained and she responded (a soap opera that I somehow missed at the time...). As you can see I have big expectations for Stanford... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#30: Kyoto University https://www.ripple.com/insights/ripple-expands-ubri-program-to-japan/ Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Advanced Integrated Studies in Human Survivability is hosting workshops and funding research projects based on interdisciplinary approach — including engineering, business and public policy — in order to address global issues. Currently, several graduate students are researching the application of blockchain technology to remittance by migrant workers, digital identity management for refugees and supply chain management for Kyoto’s traditional industry. As the industry matures, the academic community plays a pivotal in paving the road for innovative companies and entrepreneurs leveraging blockchain technologies and digital assets,” said Eric van Miltenburg, SVP of Global Operations at Ripple. “Expanding the UBRI network across the global to wide range of university partners will only continue to promote and accelerate the development of blockchain technology and use cases.” ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UBRI#31: The University of Tokyo https://www.ripple.com/insights/ripple-expands-ubri-program-to-japan/ The University of Tokyo’s Department of Economics is arranging open seminars related to blockchain and settlement for the public. In addition, professors within the department are conducting research projects on related topics such as the evolving financial system and frameworks on regulation and supervision of the financial industry’s utilization of crypto assets and blockchains. As part of its commitment to nurturing the future generation of innovators, the University of Tokyo will also award scholarships to students involved in the research. These programs, driven by the university partners, are poised to prepare the next generation of engineers, business leaders, entrepreneurs and other professionals to apply these technologies in practice. As globalization increases, so does the demand for technological solutions and talent to solve the world’s hardest financial problems, especially in core focus regions like Japan. Japan is quickly becoming a leading force in crypto assets and blockchain. The region has always been forward thinking and exploring ways to improve the current financial system. Ripple Insights: https://www.ripple.com/insights/ripple-introduces-the-university-blockchain-research-initiative/ https://www.ripple.com/insights/university-blockchain-research-initiative-expands-global-footprint-with-11-new-partners/ https://www.ripple.com/insights/ripple-expands-ubri-program-to-japan/ https://www.ripple.com/?s=campus https://www.ripple.com/?s=ubri According to Ripple this global initiative now supports 33 university partners. I only found 31 partners. Feel free to add your own material below.

Blog URL: https://coil.com/p/Hodor/Believe-in-the-Use-Case/wVlly8kWp 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠, and there is one digital asset positioned for globally-scoped levels of usage and transactions. Learn more, and find out my take on all the latest news affecting XRP in today's blog. 𝐑𝐢𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬: Xpring fund Equilibrium, a company that will make participation in ILP much more easy for stakeholders; Coins.ph releases a video celebrating its RemTech Award and profiling its use of digital assets; Xendpay re-affirms its use of Ripple technology, this time for a Kenya corridor; and FortePlatform makes headlines in a new interview. 𝐂𝐨𝐢𝐥 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬: Cinnamon formally announces a soft test release of its video streaming platform. 𝐗𝐑𝐏 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬: Six independent websites exist where stakeholders can access information about validators on the recommended UNL; @hmatejx announces that he's going to create an automatic tool for tracking xRapid usage; Blockdaemon announces outsourcing service for businesses wanting to run an XRP Validator; and Poloniex adds new stablecoin pairings for XRP. I hope you enjoy the read: Please feel free to share my blog with a friend or share it on any other platform - and thanks for doing so! My blog announcement links on other platforms: Twitter Reddit r/Ripple Reddit r/CryptoCurrency Reddit r/CryptoMarkets Reddit r/xrp Reddit r/RippleTalk Reddit r/alternativecoin Reddit r/CoilCommunity Bitcointalk - alt coin sub forum Bitcointalk - XRP speculation thread

So thanks for posting the Crypto Eri video. She explains the 2020 thing is actually ‘fiscal 2020’ which begins in Mar 2019. ( ie now ) SBIVC will go live 31/7/2019. Ie now. in September there will be promotions that will feature XRP giveaways that Mr Kitao talked prominently about MoneyTap that will be in full swing now and has 33 banks participating and can use XRP for remittances that Ripple are in process of investing in this venture that the MoneyTap enterprise is now under SBI Securities. All of that sounds very promising to me. Why are we so very keen to be the first to bring ‘bad’ news? Which often turns out to be false (as much of the title of this thread was). I don’t know what SBI will do for price in the short term, but I’m certain it’s an important part of the global infrastructure being assembled. Feel free to poo-poo SBI and use blinking memes as much as you like, but be aware that nearly everything said about SBI in a derogatory way has at its base a misunderstanding of the Japanese language or culture. For instance he never said it would go to $10 and certainly not in the blink of an eye.

As @Zedy44 says, the big take away is the redirection of institutional buyers to market to buy XRP. VERY IMPORTANT. Firstly (and obviously) this means more buy pressure on the price. Secondly (and maybe over looked) is that Ripple believe now that the market is in a position to support them orders. This now is the part where the organic growth in the XRP market comes in. Your 'Marker Makers' etc step in to meet the demand rather than Ripple. Fantastic news!

It is with great pleasure that I present the results of the XRParcade demographic. I would like to thank everyone that participated. https://www.xrparcade.com/demographic/

As usual... much confusion and some disheartened panic... sigh. I’m cross posting this to answer the 2020 thing:

Meh.......This kind of non-sense comes with the territory. That's why you make sure that you are lawyered-up appropriately: Ripple Labs Brings on Former Top SEC Officials to Help Defend Private Securities Lawsuit Former SEC Chair to Represent Ripple in XRP Lawsuit Ripple Hires General Counsel from Lending Giant CIT Group Ripple Welcomes New Board Member Benjamin Lawsky As I've explained in previous posts, every nation-state is trying their damnedest to become the leader of the blockchain/crypto revolution that is unfolding before our very eyes. The US lopsidedly dominated the ‘Age of Information’ and wants a repeat with crypto/blockchain. It makes no ******* sense for the various powers that be, here in the US (i.e. SEC, CFTC, etc.), to undermine the growth potential of one of the Red, White, & Blue’s prized unicorns (Ripple). XRP being classified as a security is extremely and highly unlikely. Better yet, if there was such a profound issue and or concern about XRP being a security, regulators globally would’ve addressed it already, Period!! However, what has really cemented my theory are the highly orchestrated and subtle subliminal messages being pushed out by representatives from the SEC and other regulating bodies. Earlier this year SEC Commissioner, Hester Peirce, offered the following statement: "Yet many of these projects begin in a centralized manner that looks about the same as any other start-up. A group of people get together to build something, and they need to find investors to fund their efforts, so they sell securities, sometimes called tokens. The SEC applies existing securities laws to these securities offerings, which means that they must be conducted in accordance with the securities laws or under an exemption. When the tokens are not being sold as investment contracts, however, they are not securities at all. Tokens sold for use in a functioning network, rather than as investment contracts, fall outside the definition of securities." (Paragraph 14) After reading that one paragraph I immediately thought of Ripple/XRP, particularly the last couple of sentences. Ripple’s has never promoted or sold XRP as “investment contracts.” Also, the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has recently come out saying that XRP has been deemed to have “non-security attributes:" "Tokens may have mixed features that may overlap with the above categories, or change over time. For example, Ether can be used as a means of ‘payment’ (exchange token) on the Ethereum platform, and can also be used to run applications (utility token). XRP has similar features." (Page 8) A simple definition of a security is any proof of ownership or debt that has been assigned a value and may be sold. For the holder, a security represents an investment as an owner, creditor or rights to ownership on which the person hopes to gain profit. Examples are stocks, bonds and options- as these prove OWNERSHIP in such-said company/entity. Because XRP is an agnostic utility token used as a bridge-asset for cross-border/domestic payments, owning XRP gives you no rights or ownership in the private company Ripple. Yes, you and I may have purchased XRP via exchanges in hopes that the value will appreciate as more and more banks and FIs begin to utilize xRapid for liquidity, however, this is pure speculation and betting on our part as holders of XRP.

Yes of course, I never left. And yes... I still speak with "WhalePal" and I would even go so far as to say we've become friends. We laugh now at the OP... which I caught some flack for haha.... Funny thing was less than a month after the OP XRP ran from 20 cents to its ATH above $3. Anyway... I was speaking with WhalePal and it reminded me of this thread so I figured I'd come back and remind everyone that this "market manipulation" isn't new.... its been going on for awhile... and those orchestrating it are VERY good at what they do. TBH I don't stay current with all the drama... but I'm seeing similar trends now that I did then. Frustration at XRP's price action, speculation that founders are dumping, etc... I will close this as I started this long ago... You don't know me and I don't know you so please take it all for a grain of salt. But given the current market climate I'd highly suggest y'all HODL because when the downwards pressure ceases....... this thing will fly and rumor is that may be soon

Fixed it.

@Eric123 My perspective is a bit different; in my opinion the alt season begins once BTC momentum tapers off and the price becomes stuck. While this may take place after BTC hits some ridiculous ATH, I think that chances are pretty good for the season to start before BTC ever hits 30k (which is the magic public FOMO boundary imo). The reason for my thinking is market manipulation and whale (MM/trading desks/whales) action. Since the market remains unregulated, no safety checks exist that would prevent large players from using their shenanigans to move the market to their advantage. While these large players will be after the exact same thing as retail investors (buy low, sell high), their predicament will be somewhat more complicated due to limited crypto liquidity. Fortunately for them, they can use their large size to move the market to their own advantage and create liquidity needed to enter or exit positions. Unfortunately for everyone else, that liquidity is always created at the expense of retail traders. Take the recent xrp drop below a multi-year support; how many people do you think had their stops set right below support as they were *certain* that the support would hold? Push price below support, trigger stops, create a mountain of sells, mountain of sells provides excellent liquidity for whale market entry at rock bottom prices. Easy-peasy! Hopefully the next step in this sequence is to capitalize on positive xrp market sentiment by pushing the price above intermediate resistance, create a mini bull run, capitalize on the public FOMO, and unload into the wave of retail investors jumping onto the xrp bandwagon. That scenario aside, one angle that is missing from nearly all analysis is the one that attempts to predict what whales and large MMs might do given a particular technical setup. To do exactly that, I think it is important not to only look at price action, sentiment, supports and resistance, but to also contemplate where liquidity is located as liquidity will be the key factor driving whale action. Breakdown/breakout/fear/fomo/short-long squeeze will all be the tools used for extracting liquidity from retail investors in this instance. Wit that in mind, these days I try to not only look at TA and sentiment, but also overlay that with thinking like a market manipulator. Yes, this is the setup, this is the sentiment, this is the expected price action... okay, now if I were a whale what would I do to profit from this setup? When I apply that type of thinking to our current setup, this is what I see: I need to get BTC to 30k; BTC momentum is drying up; alts are freeze-dried (to quote @dr_ed) but people are still bullish and calling for the alt season; no one thinks that BTC will drop below 9k ("that's not how the bull market behaves"). Ok, what I can do now is slowly start to pump the alts to get people looking at that direction and gradually interested; then, I can drop btc to speed up the transition to alts; then I can push btc below 9k to really trigger those stops and create entry liquidity while at the same time pushing alts even higher; then I can sell my alts right into the wave of retail selling their btc and convert my newlyfound gains back into btc at rock-bottom prices. Far fetched? I think it was Phil Potter who said something along the lines of "if it wasn't for us, BTC would have never gone above 2k". Plus, I distinctly remember back in 2017 losing my mind trying to time alts vs btc since as soon as I would jump onto one bandwagon it would begin to pull back and the other would start going up. The lesson there is that large players can effectively use alts to fuel btc, and btc to fuel alts. Alts have thus far not fueled btc, but they are freeze dried and ready to go. Once btc gets stuck, my bet is that it will be the alt rally that refuels it for the next leg up. As to whether btc will get stuck before 30k, we will have to wait and see.

That visual showing how much money Ripple are investing in Coil is a big story. A little while ago I watched a video where Stefan Thomas explained how they designed the architecture of XRP (or was it Codius) to be very open and flexible to accommodate change. He mentioned how he was avoiding the pitfall ETH had fallen into, apparently ETH is written in a very dense manner with too many options. In a nutshell his mantra is: Built in plasticity wins over accommodating long lists of options for every imagined eventuality. This guy has a very intelligent approach to developing software. He helped design XRP and now he is going after being first in a very big market he has identified. I am quite sure the present iteration of Coil is open to changing to fit the markets that emerge. I think people should not think the way Coil has been launched has much to do with how it will look in five years time. Coil as it presently stand is an opportunity to get a few techies and XRP fanclub involved. This early in the project feedback is king and people like Hodor and Crypto Eri are doing their bit. Streaming payments is not just about videos and entertainment. I have many subscriptions: Business accounting software, Adobe design suites, Trade reference suites, Address finding software, Microsoft Office, Norton spam filters, mobile phones, voip phones and online tutorial services. This is costing my business many thousands a year. I do not like the blanket fees these software companies charge and would far prefer to pay by usage. My wife has a car she uses once a year. Again the insurance should be on usage in real time. Car hire should be streamed on usage. Parking meters should start when I park and stop when I leave. Streaming payments will be huge. Coil are building something with the plasticity to take advantage of the markets as they emerge, that's why Ripple are putting so much money behind their former CTO.

Blog URL: https://coil.com/p/Hodor/XRP-News-Digital-Asset-s-Inflection-Point/r6VFanS8k XRP is firmly in the spotlight: Learn about the latest high-profile news impacting XRP in today's blog! 𝐑𝐢𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬: Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen publish a Letter to Congress; Monica Long talks to Bloomberg; Ryan Zagone is appointed to the New York State Digital Currency Taskforce; SBI VC Pro goes live; UBRI gives to Kyoto University & the University of Tokyo 𝐂𝐨𝐢𝐥 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬: Coil publishes plans for a 'Coil instance' of Discourse, a forum management tool. 𝐗𝐑𝐏 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬: XRP Productions publishes a new video 'Classic Schwartz, Episode I'; Leonidas Hadjiloizou publishes the results of his demographic survey; An XRP Meetup happens in South Africa; Exonium goes live with an XRP-USDT listing; and Allbit, a decentralized exchange, adds an XRP pairing. I hope you enjoy the read: Please feel free to share my blog with a friend or share it on any other platform - and thanks for doing so! My blog announcement links on other platforms: Twitter Reddit r/Ripple Reddit r/CryptoCurrency Reddit r/CryptoMarkets Reddit r/xrp Reddit r/RippleTalk Reddit r/alternativecoin Reddit r/CoilCommunity Bitcointalk - alt coin sub forum Bitcointalk - XRP speculation thread

This is from the forte Gaming Blog. They have a few other entries worth checking. https://medium.com/forte-labs-inc/forging-the-future-of-games-3aebbaf6eccd "we’ve collaborated closely with Ripple’s Xpring team on architectural designs for trustlessly hosting software services in a decentralized ecosystem using Codius and facilitating cross-chain transactions using Interledger Protocol (ILP) for interoperability and XRP for inter-asset liquidity, all open source projects. We believe these projects offer a strong foundation for a future we’re excited to help game developers build: where game economies offer multi-directional transactions between parties, greater player agency, minimized counterparty risk, multi-network contract interoperability, and trust-minimized computation." "Initially, we’ll help developers with some of the difficult but essential basics. We’re building a wallet that will be easy to use and integrate with both new and existing games on many platforms and facilitate cross-chain transactions using Interledger. We’re building a container-based hosting solution compatible with the Codius specification for running game-specific chains and flexible, secure, performant computation that rich, engaging games need. We’re building a security-audited smart contract framework and tools to inspect nodes, update contracts, reconcile new data, generate data reports, and mint new chains. We’re securing licenses for regulatory compliant operations in all major markets. We’re offering market-making services to address cold start economic challenges in new game economies. We’re building a white-label marketplace framework with embeddable filter-by-game views. We’re composing these solutions based on a deep evaluation of public blockchains, layer 2 solutions, and off chain computation in combination with our own substantial research and development efforts." The inaugural fund, managed by Forte, is primarily targeting game developers operating live game economies with over 50,000 daily active users Main team members : Kevin Chou founded kabam and sold it for $800 mil, Brett Seyler, GM at Unity Love what Ripple is doing with its investments and building partnerships to fuel XRP usage. In the light of this, I would think the 1 billion investment in Coil would have been very well thought out.

Ripple's Market Makers strategy was badly managed...instead of creating higher floors they just suppressed the up price action and "hoped" we wouldn't drop below 0.28 USD... Very very bad strategy....and it might be about to blow up on everyone's face (including theirs)... Sentiment for retail buyers is at all time lows...and if corporations/banks can still buy directly from Ripple who's gonna create price support... In the past Ripple employees used to come here often...if anyone is reading this they should not think that a petition was created by "crazy" people but the result of a long lasting builds up of disillusioned..... Yes...stop dumping and tell your Market Maker to start buying back to reverse the depressed sentiment...everything else will fall into place naturally after that...

Hey guys, I wanted to share with you a video I made on fiatleak after monitoring it for a while. You can consider it as a highlight of the day. I noticed the movements were coming by waves in between moderately long pauses (a few minutes). My tweet says I recorded it on the 8th August, but I recorded it on the 9th, yesterday. I have been monitoring fiatleak for a solid amount of time and the waves you can see are only a very recent event that puts a smile on my face every time it occurs. Not long ago, it was only the USD market that was streamlined. Also the volume on the 24H is constantly raising, even though it is Saturday, the XRP volume has increased by a few hundred of millions. Anyway, enjoy this little piece <3

This is U.S. specific, do you think this is what "level playing field" refers to? The Payments Modernization Act of 2019 Can Ripple be partnered with the Federal Reserve? This is the Fact Sheet: The Problem: Inefficient payments push Americans into high-cost alternatives Too many American workers pay expensive fees because their paychecks take three or more days to clear. The inefficiency of our current payments system harms everyday Americans struggling to access their funds in real time. Our inefficient payments system drives families to use high-cost financial services in order to access their funds more rapidly. The Federal Reserve found that nearly a third of all Americans cannot pay their bills on time. Waiting for checks to clear over a weekend or a holiday is one reason why American families spend billions in overdraft fees. This is especially true for individuals who do not have conventional work schedules and are paid over the weekend. The various payments rules and clearing schedules make it nearly impossible for people with volatile incomes and limited reserves to avoid overdraft and other fees. The Federal Reserve has delayed its implementation of real-time payments for too long. In 2015, the Federal Reserve launched its Faster Payments Task Force with the goal of developing a plan to bring faster payments to the United States by 2020. Recently, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said that the Federal Reserve would not make this deadline. This delay puts the United States behind other countries in its adoption of a faster payments system. Central banks, including those in the U.K., Australia, South Africa, Japan, Mexico, and Iceland, have already implemented real-time payments systems. A real-time payments system is a utility that should not be controlled by the largest banks. The American people deserve a public utility that allows them to safely and securely access their own money and that allows small institutions and entrepreneurs to compete on a more even playing field. The Department of the Treasury, in its July 2018 report entitled, “A Financial System that Creates Economic Opportunities,” recommended the Fed work to facilitate a faster retail payments system, in particular, for smaller financial institutions such as community banks and credit unions. The Fed’s delay could result in a de facto monopoly of our payments system by the big banks. According to Thomas Hoenig, former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, “This new immediate payments system will in every sense be a public utility and support payment innovations by banks and non-bank financial technology companies worldwide.” The Solution: The Payments Modernization Act: Clarifies that the Federal Reserve has the existing authority to build a real-time payments system. Ensures the United States has a fast, efficient, equitable, and fair payments system by updating the Expedited Funds Availability Act to require financial institutions to recognize funds in real time. Requires the Fed to build and implement its own real-time payments system. Also, more from Ayanna Pressley: Real-Time Payments As it stands today, working families wait days at a time just to have their checks clear. The Federal Reserve (Fed) can take up to 5 days to clear a payment. Meanwhile, the Clearinghouse, a private firm owned by 24 of the largest banks, has implemented a real time payments system—another clear example of our two-tiered financial system. In the absence of a real time payments system, consumers have turned to apps like Cash and Venmo to facilitate transactions that should not require a private platform. The Federal Reserve already offers real time payments between commercial bank accounts within the Fed and should extend that service to all consumers Impact on Consumers and Families Allowing people faster access to their money will help reduce: • Overdraft fees: The Center for Responsible Lending estimates that consumers pay nearly $14 billion annually in overdraft fees1 . • Late fees: 61% of consumers make one-time bill payments, instead of automatic or recurring payments, resulting in nearly half (46%) of consumers paying a bill late.2 • Reliance on risky financial products like payday loans: According to a 2018 report from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), U.S. consumers borrow almost $90 billion every year in short-term, small dollar loans that range from $300 to $5000. Real time payments will also be instrumental in allowing small businesses to more reliably make payroll. Currently, the delay in payments to vendors, contractors and other small businesses means that making payroll is significantly more stressful on small business owners. Real Time Payments The Payments Modernization Act would: 1. Require the Federal Reserve to establish a real time payments system that would operate as a public utility that prioritizes security, consumer health and transparency. 2. Ensure that funds are available to consumers for withdrawal in real time—providing parity for consumers and financial institutions. Thoughts on this?

@MQB Time-wise Bitcoin would be at about at the $600-$700 level which is where it was in late 2016. This is an acceleration of the last cycle - however looking at the cycle this way, (as I have been this entire thread) does not take into account the effect of the halving which occurred previously occurred on July 9th, 2016 and will happen in May of 2020. Honestly. I think bitcoin will have an even more extreme price movement because the price will be higher earlier and rise even further based on the halving. As I've written I think bitcoin retakes it's ATH by the end of November 2019 so in 4 months, then next year the fun starts and we start rising and eventually going parabolic again - I think I put the projected top of this cycle at around $400k which would happen in about a year or so after the halving. @Milly238 Thanks. @TheXRPNinja Thanks. @djdhrubs Actually I wouldn't do that. If the ALT's are just long shot trades and out of the top 25 on Coin Market Cap, I might get out of them on my first opportunity, maybe the next red bitcoin day and probably as soon a I could and not wait for $13,800. If they are projects you believe in I'd stick with them or even accumulate. I have positions in Digi, OMG and NEO - I no longer look at my ALT's in satoshi value (too painful). I agree with @dr_ed that a global currency crisis probably won't help coins other than Bitcoin, but a big rise in bitcoin usually raises the entire market. (People have been calling for a currency crisis for a long time now and eh eventually it may happen, but we may grow old waiting for it. Eventually the Yellowstone super volcano will erupt too - it's expected anytime between now and the next 10,000 years).

In other news, an asteroid could hit earth tomorrow.

Not sure where to drop this comment. It is fundamental analysis, not TA. But it's 100% XRP related. Bear with me. One thing Galgitron posted last year (at least one thing) has stayed with me. "One very important aspect to understand about xRapid that's unique to it, is that xRapid drives BOTH market AND ledger transactions, in a ratio of 2 to 1 because there's two exchange transactions and one ledger transaction for every xRapid transfer. In this way, it's possible to figure out approximately how much of the current price of XRP is due to speculation, or utility. The easiest way to see this is by comparing the first and third figure shown on this page (total market exchange volume versus total ledger volume). This will suffice for now, but as further XRP adoption takes hold in other business sectors, the ledger volume should outstrip market volume, but we're a very long ways from that yet. By comparing these two figures, you can easily determine how much speculation versus utility there is." http://galgitron.net/Post/How-xRapid-Worksand-Doesnt I noticed last night that the ledger payment volume was slightly higher than the market volume.......when I started checking several months ago, it was usually around 30-35% of market volume. Apparently what I noticed has happened at least a few times over the last couple of months. This morning ledger payment volume has dropped back a bit, but this represents a real sign of rising utility and is the early indicator that xRapid is starting to be a factor. (Last nights stats above. See the link for real time data.) https://xrpcharts.ripple.com/#/ If....if it is true that XRP Price will turn out to be an exponential function of transaction volume (and it makes sense to me) then this is significant,. Because...it means the ledger payment volume has already roughly doubled from six month ago....and now we actually have Moneygram, which should contribute to the trend going forward, along with other payments. At some point this will move XRP price. The idea that it might move up in a distinct stepladder manner is interesting too... and also makes sense (especially if you subscribe to the notion that Ripple is using its sales to control price). I'm more agnostic on that part, but it's worth considering.

Hi gang, Just wanted to say hi and introduce the validator that I've been running for some time. If you like you can read about it at: https://ipv6.validator.amsterdam - I've also decided to publish a .toml file. I suggested some changes to the rippled example config to explain IPv6 usage a while ago that were kindly accepted, however it still appears nobody is talking to me on IPv6. Does anyone know of peers that have it enabled? I had expected to see a few show up in my connection stats by now. Kind regards.

what does coil need with a billion xrp? there are countless startups that succeed with far less funding. ripple didn't even receive that much funding. is coil really that game changing? I actually don't believe that internet content monetization could possibly be the end game for coil with that level of funding.

No what’s sad is a few morons who bought at the top full well knowing what they were doing are trying to block something very cool happening for a few bucks. thats the reality of it, full stop. if all this **** had been cleared up two years ago who knows how much progress would have been made. PS - you are a drama queen.

Those who are interested can monitor the XRP volume in Bitso and Coins.Ph from these links when you navigate to "Analyze" tab. For now it shows just past 30 days but the volume should still be trending upwards during the coming months. If not then something must be wrong. https://xrpscan.com/account/rLSn6Z3T8uCxbcd1oxwfGQN1Fdn5CyGujK https://xrpscan.com/account/rU2mEJSLqBRkYLVTv55rFTgQajkLTnT6mA PS. The "Aug 9" nosedive within the pictures is simply caused by the fact that it is early Friday at the moment when I'm typing this. Also try not pay too much attention to the number of payments in Coins.Ph because the exchange has been constantly targeted by the known XRP spamming accounts. Update: in below is something that might help to gauge xRapid flows as well.

https://thexrpdaily.com/2019/08/13/the-fca-regulatory-agency-categorizes-xrp-as-utility-token-and-not-a-security/

Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, and Chris Larsen, co-founder and executive chairman of the firm, have jointly penned an open letter to U.S. Congress over regulatory issues in the cryptocurrency space. In their letter issued Sunday, Garlinghouse and Larsen say, without regulatory clarity, there is a risk to innovation, tax revenue, and jobs that blockchain technology has to offer. https://www.ripple.com/insights/open-letter-to-congress/ “We urge you to support regulation that does not disadvantage U.S. companies using these technologies to innovate responsibly,” they write. The executives also seek classification of digital currencies that recognizes their fundamental differences and not paint them “with a broad brush.” Garlinghouse and Larsen believe that cryptocurrencies have the opportunity to “complement” fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar and “not replace them,” and that the U.S. has the chance to lead in the space. The open letter comes on the heels of a hearing by the Senate Banking Committee on regulatory frameworks for cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, which is scheduled to take place on July 30, and will be live-streamed here: https://www.banking.senate.gov/hearings/examining-regulatory-frameworks-for-digital-currencies-and-blockchain (Source: theblockcrypto.com)

Blog URL: https://coil.com/p/Hodor/The-XRP-Community-Fund-Foundation/dM4UuCJ5n The XRP Community Fund Foundation is primed to change the landscape of XRP; In today's blog I answer some of the questions people have posed and provide more background on the organization. And of course, there's something a little 'extra' for Coil subscribers at the end! I hope you enjoy the read: Please feel free to share my blog with a friend or share it on any other platform - and thanks for doing so! My blog announcement links on other platforms: Twitter Reddit r/Ripple Reddit r/CryptoCurrency Reddit r/CryptoMarkets Reddit r/xrp Reddit r/RippleTalk Reddit r/alternativecoin Reddit r/CoilCommunity Bitcointalk - alt coin sub forum Bitcointalk - XRP speculation thread

3...2...1... @Moonraker @Freaky @Cooliozxrp

So Bitcoin has moved into what I think will be a gradual rise for the next three weeks or so, by gradual I mean 1-3% a day (possible 2-3 big days of about 10% or more) with 80% of those days being green, to bring us back above the E-Line - by mid August we should be back above $13k. I would guess we will overshoot the E-Line by a few $k but like before I would anticipate pull backs if we do. I'm sure there will be a fair amount of volatility - exciting times coming up.

Not to criticise you but this is one of the most redundant things I hear people say and what do you honestly expect? Of course there are emotional people here. In an ideal world with years of experience you wouldn't react emotionally about your investment, you would just react accordingly and reassess your investment if needed, but the reality is that most people here aren't long time investors, we are all still learning. Even if you've had years of investing in stocks/ETF's etc you will still be in for a surprise if you invest in cryptocurrencies simply because the market is so incredibly manipulated and irrational. I don't understand why some people here are surprised that people are emotional and defensive about having money invested into an asset that has retraced 90% lol, it's just obvious. Furthermore, most of the time this "ad hominem attack rather than discussing the core topics" is usually because there are many people here who don't present a logical argument for their negative view on XRP, they just criticise it for the sake of it and without sound reasoning and therefore it is FUD which is only ever met with emotional responses and that's perfectly understandable IMO. If users are negative about XRP and present an actual legit argument, you will find that most of the time there are many users who are perfectly inclined to debate with that contrary view. If you just bash someones investment without reasoning, which is childish, then don't expect a well thought out response, because it doesn't deserve it.

Ripple- Please stop the XRP dumping. The current strategy is not working, we can see this by looking at the XRP price decline and XRP holder feedback for the past few years. If this trend continues we are going to see XRP trade less than a few pennies. Including retail investors mass selling off XRP based on frustration and and attempt to cut off their losses. Myself like most other investors would love to be wrong, but unfortunately that is not the current market trend and consensus throughout the community. Below are a few summary points on the sell off problem: Most people are aware of co-founder Jed mass selling off his XRP. He had 5.3 XRP has of 2016. Including selling XRP worth ~million a day. Ripple established an agreement with how much if his XRP can be sold per day. This is a major lessons learned. https://www.investopedia.com/news/ripple-execs-get-superrich-xrp-success-new-billionaires/ Ripple owns about half of the current supply of XRP. It has been estimated that Ripple has sold $1.14 billion worth of XRP since Q4 2016. With an estimated $251 million worth of XRP sold Q2 2019. https://www.ccn.com/ripple-q2-2019-xrp-sales/ XRP holders above that were able to obtain XRP at no cost or low cost, have been able to make a ridiculous amount of profit in the last few years. But what about the XRP investors in the last few years? XRP trading value has become a fraction of the same value when compared to 2017. Including XRP being the worst performer of top 10 cryptos in 2019. This is a huge concern for current and new XRP investors, when considering the past sell offs and future risks of sell offs. https://www.coindesk.com/xrp-was-worst-performing-top-10-crypto-in-h1-but-bnb-shone What about next steps, are we on the right track? Ripple has stated they are going to reduce the sell off of their XRP. That should help, but majority of investors do not have confidence this is enough. Investing in XRP and Ripple's sell off has become a running joke, that isn't funny. News that was published today: Ripple to Give Away 1 Billion XRP in Massive Bid to Fund Online Content - CoinDesk. The feedback generated in the community is counter productive. https://www.reddit.com/r/Ripple/comments/cqved6/ripple_to_give_away_1_billion_xrp_in_massive_bid/ Earlier this month news like the following is being released Hundreds of XRP Holders Petition Trump to “Stop Ripple Dumping": https://www.trustnodes.com/2019/08/08/hundreds-of-xrp-holders-petition-trump-to-stop-ripple-dumping Then we have desperation lawsuits popping up in the news SEC Guidance Gives Ammo to Lawsuit Claiming XRP Is Unregistered Security, which are only going to continue: https://www.coindesk.com/investors-suing-ripple-cite-sec-guidance-to-argue-xrp-is-a-security There is a lot of counter feedback that has validity. Like Ripple and their employees should be rewarded based on the XRP sales, Ripple and their employees have the right to sell off XRP as they desire, distribution of XRP has long term benefits, Ripple selling off XRP will help bring in short term profits, etc. Those are all good points, but they will be irrelevant in a few years if the XRP price continues to decline. It is critical for all XRP holders, that this trend is reversed. The impacted XRP holders include Ripple, Ripple employees, institutions that have already acquired XRP, and retail investors. This is a vital group to ensure they have confidence in order for long term success. We need to make sure XRP holders in the next few years have confidence. Including reducing risks and opportunities for mass sell offs. Ensuring there are investment opportunities. As well as improving confidence and trust with all XRP holders. Ripple can take new and creative steps to resolve the above. We also have a community with plenty of suggestions. Ideas like burning off tokens, Institutions buying from open market, etc. have been discussed. Please find a solution that is in the best interest for all of the XRP holders.

Also, @Sporticus, this is your quote from April 2018 (I bolded the part that is completely cotradictory to what you are stating in this topic): Can you explain what changed your opinion in this one year?

Recently there has been a narrative the past few months that cryptocurrencies or the current digital assets traded on the open market are non-correlated assets to the traditional markets. While this rhetoric has been reiterated, there has not been any substantial evidence backing these claims. General retail investors would stereotypically agree that the crypto market behaves in a chaotic manner. Untethered from any external influences and simply driven by its gradual adoption as a means of transacting business without third parties or as a haven. But given historical macro movements, it appears that there has been a correlation to equity markets. Intermarket relationships typically become exaggerated during the months of large macro movements in the markets. Allowing relationships between assets to be easily observable. While the crypto market is relatively “young”, there are several instances within the past few years that have met these conditions. The infamous bull run of Q4 2017 and the September movements of 2018 were two distinct periods where the intermarket relationship between the cryptocurrency market and equities appear. For the sake of discussion, my observations will be primarily focused on XRP. Both BTC and ETH will be sparingly mentioned as most digital assets moved in tandem during these periods. December 2017 During the period in which both BTC and ETH rallied into Q4 2017, alt-coins were experiencing both drastic and exponential bursts of appreciation and corrections. These price movements were often random and unsupported by any announcements or developments in their blockchain networks. And while retail investors in the crypto market were perplexed by these movements, managers and investors outside of the space realized a bubble was forming. XRP’s sudden ascent into single digit dollars late December spurred rumors of elaborate projects going “live” on the XRP ledger or that massive funds had begun to invest into the digital asset. Yet understanding the financial and economic environment during this period provides valuable context to XRP’s movement. At the time, the US domestic economy (along with other major economies in world) began to enter the late-cycle economic phase. Throughout 2017, global markets were experiencing a bull market that was reflected in equities. Bull markets tend to create feedbacks in which investors continue to reinvest or utilize more capital as assets rise in value and new market participants enter. As lenders and speculators gain money fast, speculators equity grows giving them more collateral to secure new loans to reinvest which reinforces the bubble. As speculators continued to make more money, they began to reinvest in even riskier assets. The crypto market at the current time was a completely new and unregulated market to retail investors, making it extremely speculative. As investors from the traditional markets continued to earn capital, they began to seek other avenues to make more money. Eventually more and more investors found themselves entering into the crypto market after either hearing or seeing how participants were doubling or tripling their money effortlessly and quickly. During a bull market, investor psychology begins to change due to the influx of money being made. This eventually causes a shift in investor mindset where the appreciating assets they own are sacred to them and that anyone without them are missing an opportunity. Which exactly matched the general sentiment around the crypto market in Q4 of 2017. Essentially the performance of global equities created a spillover of capital that reached digital assets. Looking at the historical charts during this period and overlapping them, one can visually see this movement. Equities and the total market capitalization of the cryptocurrency market reached all-time highs within a month of each other. Along with reaching all-time highs in unison, markets began to roughly correct simultaneously with crypto being the first to do so. This was easily explained as cryptocurrencies are extremely speculative in comparison to the equity markets and thus carry the most risk. As markets began to reach their tops, riskier assets began to sell off first which was then followed by other, more traditional financial assets. In order to find how strong of a correlation between US equities and XRP during this period was, one would have to calculate and compare their respective performance. There are several methods of calculating relationships between assets, but my methodology will be focused on calculating the Pearson and Spearman coefficient. Both calculating the Pearson and Spearman coefficient will measure the extent of how linear the relationship between both assets are. Both coefficients are always valued between -1 and 1. A positive coefficient implies a positive correlation while a negative coefficient suggests the relationship being inversely related. Along with that, a coefficient around 0 indicates the relationship between both assets is extremely weak. Spearman's correlation determines the strength and direction of the monotonic relationship between the assets rather than the strength and direction of the linear relationship. “A monotonic relationship is a relationship that does one of the following: as the value of one variable increases, so does the value of the other variable. Or as the value of one variable increases, the other variable value decreases.” (1) The following calculated coefficients used both the SPX and XRP daily closing price (excluding the weekends) from January 03, 2017 to May 10, 2018. Ending at May due to visually seeing a divergence begin between both assets. A total of 341 observed daily closing prices for both SPX and XRP were observed. The Pearson coefficient between the assets was calculated to be 0.783669 while the Spearman coefficient is 0.861674. Both coefficients calculated suggest a moderate to strong correlation between the S&P and XRP during this period. Confirming the assumed correlation derived from visually interpreting the overlapped historical charts. Final Thoughts: • Due to the crypto market being illiquid and having shallow order books compared to equity markets, cryptocurrencies experienced exaggerated movements compared equities. • The May divergence can be attributed to many factors such as governments clamping down on exchanges/cryptocurrencies while warning retail investors that crypto was an unregulated space and penalties could be handed for illicit activity. Another possibility could be that capital began to flee in the wake of a bear market beginning in cryptos and along in global markets. September 2018 Although a divergence followed the market corrections of early 2018 between equities and cryptocurrencies, the correlation would reemerge later in the year. While digital assets further depreciated from a correction into a bear market, equities rallied the following months from May. Global equities rose to month-long highs in October with US equities reaching their previous record highs at the same time. Crypto at the time was finally stabilizing itself from the previous correction in January and began to consolidate. But without any developments or announcements, XRP saw its value rise significantly in September 2018. In respect to the other digital assets, XRP was the only major digital asset to experience such drastic change within a couple of days. The extreme movement once again spawned several rumors of entities utilizing the XRP ledger for operations. But US and global equities during these months provides an insightful context to the digital asset’s movement. For example, US equities once again topped in October and began to enter a period of correction with XRP reacting and following the market. To further support the argument of the equities’ influence on crypto, XRP mirrored the stock movement of SBI Holdings. SBI is a major share holder of Ripple and promoter of Ripple’s technology in the Japan. Forming the Japanese banking consortium intended to use xCurrent for domestic rails and SBI Ripple Asia, a subsidiary meant to drive adoption of xCurrent and xRapid in the Asian Pacific region. Explaining the inexplicable tandem in movement between XRP and SBI’s stock. Calculating the Pearson and Spearman’s coefficient describing XRP’s relationship between the SPX and SBHGF(SBI stock symbol) provides support. Observed daily closing prices of SBHGF, SPX, and XRP from September 17 to December 14 was used in the calculations. The intermarket relationship of XRP and the S&P displayed a Pearson coefficient of 0.509245 along with a Spearman coefficient of 0.600470. Suggesting a moderate positive correlation between assets. In respect to XRP’s relationship with SBHGF, the Pearson coefficient during this period was 0.712559 with a Spearman coefficient of 0.706631. A strong, positively correlated relationship between the assets. In comparison to the correlation’s strength in 2017, the S&P and XRP’s relationship weakened but XRP’s tracking of SBI’s stock reinforced the notion that crypto was still being affected by equities. But regardless of the amount of market participants, capital, or volumes traded, money from the traditional markets entered and withdrew themselves for the second time. Final Thoughts: • An explanation on why the calculated Pearson coefficient weakened the second time around could be that the sample size of the data taken is much smaller in comparison to the original calculation. The crypto market was also a lot more regulated than what it used to be. Possibly dissuading previous participants from the traditional markets on entering again. • There appears to be a pattern in which whenever equities reach a localized high, the crypto market potentially receives an influx of capital from the traditional markets that causes a rise in valuations. Present Day Understanding and observing ONE of the main historical influences on cryptocurrencies can help us interpret the movement’s of today. The economic and financial environment also provides valuable context in interpreting current movements. Back in 2017, cryptocurrencies were the new fad where money was to be made. Currently there is a similar movement going on in the traditional markets that involve IPOs. Displaying a similar bullish or even FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) sentiment crypto witnessed by the general market. These past few months have also seen very familiar movements in the markets. In the month of July, there was a broad rally across on all different types of assets. Whether it was the more commonly traded stocks or the defensive assets such as bonds, much of the market rose synchronized. Even speculative assets such as crypto, which are last to receive capital due to their risk, witnessed a rise in prices. Both BTC and ETH broke out of their downward month-long trends to post new relative highs. With XRP seeing movement as well but not to the degree of the other digital assets. And as equities began to top out again, corrections throughout the markets began to ensue. Currently it appears that what traders witnessed last October and even further back, January 2017, in the markets has occurred again. The third time in which cryptocurrencies and equities have topped and corrected in tandem. Yet past performance is not indicative of future performance or movements. And while I personally believe that this relationship will change in the future, observing and considering historical trends helps us put the cryptocurrency market’s recent movements into perspective. Time will tell.

Just got back... more to come later but just wanted to post a few quick thoughts. First, we are 2 for 2 with symmetrical triangles. If you recall we predicted a +/- $0.02 breakout that was supposed to hit this morning and we hit this perfectly, timing and all. We broke from $0.26 to $0.28 and we now stand above $0.28. We hopefully have reclaimed the $0.28 support and this is very good news; we have a floor again, at least for now. We were treading in some treacherous waters there for a minute. I expect that if push above $0.30, we could be in for a nice rally, as I think this will start a short squeeze. All of those shorts are probably sweating right now. If you're going to short, do it after a parabolic run, not after a big price drop. Here is the symmetrical triangle that we ascended out of right on schedule:

Blog URL: https://coil.com/p/Hodor/TestNet-Fun/VSJaznqPg The XRP Test Net awaits you, with complimentary accounts loaded with (faux) virtual currency. Learn more in today's blog! I hope you enjoy the read: Please feel free to share my blog with a friend or share it on any other platform - and thanks for doing so! My blog announcement links on other platforms: Twitter Reddit r/Ripple Reddit r/CryptoCurrency Reddit r/CryptoMarkets Reddit r/xrp Reddit r/RippleTalk Reddit r/alternativecoin Reddit r/CoilCommunity Bitcointalk - alt coin sub forum Bitcointalk - XRP speculation thread

Great stuff Jana. Another aspect of this that I don’t think has registered well as yet is this possibility: I suspect Ripple must have very bullish projections for next quarters else they could not do this proportional easing. The giant war chest in escrow must be distributed. Ripple know that, and I believe place it as a very high priority. So they can’t turn away distribution (sales) requests unless they believe the overall volume is going to rise and make good the ‘lost’ sales. Now given that they, unlike us, actually do know what moves are coming up... if they have good projections that makes me very happy. I don’t know whether it will be Moneygram or SBI or Santander or some other, but it looks to me like they are aware that things are soon going to get busy. I admit that I could be wrong about this, but it seems self consistent logic and it fits all the facts that I’m aware of.

Please keep this thread on topic, avoiding personal remarks. In the future if members do not like content posted please allow those who do to express their opinions. Many may see it as valuable. Increasingly there are a handful of people on this chat who consistently impose negative viewpoints repeatedly on almost anything which is posted in favor of XRP. Eventually that will be problematic if it continues as it stifles productive discussion. Critical discussion, politely, is always welcome. Inciting others with personal attacks or language will eventually be met warnings and then bans. Thanks!

LONDON 2019 October 23 - 24 There are a few presentations that I find interesting. But I was mostly and highly anticipating a Corda Settler session. And it has been added today! CordaCon website

Blog URL: https://coil.com/p/Hodor/Visionaries-vs-Protectionists/Dtw6Y_8Vw Who will you follow:The visionaries or the protectionists? Learn more, along with all the latest news impacting XRP, in today's blog! 𝐑𝐢𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬: The SWELL Conference website is updated with more details; The fourteenth episode of the Ripple Drop is released; Shanna Leonard reveals details about Ripple's marketing efforts; and the Technology Policy Institute (TPI) covers regulatory challenges facing Ripple. 𝐂𝐨𝐢𝐥 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬: Stefan Thomas discusses the importance of the Web Monetization standard with Reinhard Cate; and I indicate six recommended Coil content creators to check out for subscribers. 𝐗𝐑𝐏 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬: Nasdaq includes XRP in its default cryptomarket listing; Xago shares the results of their latest meetup in South Africa; and Colodax, CBANKX, Simex, and goFaast all add support for XRP on their respective platforms; I hope you enjoy the read: Please feel free to share my blog with a friend or share it on any other platform - and thanks for doing so! My blog announcement links on other platforms: Twitter Reddit r/Ripple Reddit r/CryptoCurrency Reddit r/CryptoMarkets Reddit r/xrp Reddit r/RippleTalk Reddit r/alternativecoin Reddit r/CoilCommunity Bitcointalk - alt coin sub forum Bitcointalk - XRP speculation thread

Are you a qualified lawyer with multi-year experience in the field including dealing with and resolving regulatory disputes or class actions? Whilst precedence is a useful guide, the approach you've taken of substituting one party with another is not the way precedence works. The circumstances and context are completely different. No they don't. I'll explain why below... Duty to the law? Of course. Duty to the Public? Not really - it's a privately held company. Duty to XRP hodlers? Not at all. The key obligation for Ripple execs is to respect the law and the interests of its shareholders. But what happens when the law is actually fluid and open to change? Should Ripple remain silent? In this case, they need to be exceptionally careful. Why? Because they have live court cases and need to be prudent with public statements. That doesn't stop them lobbying for the law to better reflect the needs of the industry. They are doing an amazing job of that, the results of which benefit all of crypto, including XRP hodlers. They are speaking with regulators, industry specialists, central banks, academics and practitioners etc. Who else is doing that? No one. You have asserted this several times. It isn't simple and the fact that you could suggest otherwise raises doubts about the remainder of your points. The logical problem for you is that if you haven't understood the full complexity of the problem to be solved then your simple solution is "dead in the water". Perhaps your solution might work for other organisations, but they definitely don't work for Ripple. Ever thought why this might be if it's so simple? You are of course entitled to your opinions. It's for us to decide if they have merit, whether they are sound. Drawing on your conscience might be a good choice for moral questions but is a terrible choice of building a strong argument about decisions that draw not on matters of conscience but ones of finance, law and politics. On the above basis, I have concluded that your arguments are neither factual nor terribly convincing.

I find it interesting how many newly created members immediately start using the word ‘hopium’. It’s almost as though they are on a crusade like their other alter-egos other members are.

Well what is research if it is not conjecture and what is hope if it is not optimism? Perhaps you suggest looking at patterns in charts and using bots with algorithms? This word hopium should be banned because it implies optimism is an addictive drug like opium. Hope is healthy, despair is unhealthy

I simply will never pay to see "content" or avoid ads. Maybe that's just me, but i will never pay to browse the web. Long XRP, but i don't see this taking off.

https://www.change.org/p/ripple-stop-ripple-dumping I was gonna comment on this but I don’t know what to say. It just seems like an incoherent mess.

Yes, I think the US regulators let us all down. I don't think Brad foresaw the SEC dropping the ball like that. The US SEC basically sat on its ass while some other countries 'saw the light', taking the initiative and risk to deal with the regulatory issues in a much more constructive way early on.

Japanese people are very fond of XRP.But Japanese people don't have many reliable exchanges. There were Coincheck, Bitbank and Bitpoint for Japanese to buy XRP. However, Coincheck and Bitpoint were hacked. And, Bitbank's reputation is not good when price soars. I understand that Japanese people have longed for SBI for a long time. I think prices will go up. Japanese are not good at English. Many Japanese use the Japanese exchange.