Chat: xRapid volumes - what are realistic targets?

[BehindtheLedger]

Some of us in the Twitterverse have been trying to detect xRapid volumes. Of course there's no way to do this directly, but using some heuristics and great tools provided by people like Wietse Wind and Thomas Silkjaer, we can get some idea. But, because we really don't have an idea of what's "good" at this stage of the game, it's hard to form an opinion re: how well it's going on the xRapid front.

Some high-level things I look at before digging deeper:

1) What's the xrpmxn volume on Bitso? How does Bitso rank in the exchange volume rankings? Is there any upward trend in the ranking? Since Bitso is a relatively quiet fiat exchange, and Mexico is supposedly a key destination for xRapid, incremental xRapid volumes should make a meaningful difference in Bitso's ranking. 

2) Same for Bittrex xrpusd - although with the US regulatory environment, it's hard to tell whether Bittrex *should* be seeing meaningful xRapid volumes at this time.

3) What's overall ledger payment volume (excluding outliers from OTC sales, etc.)? Does it look decoupled from overall market volume? Has the number of payments bumped up?

If warranted, I'll dig into the ledger payments data and look for patterns / accounts of interest etc. among the known xRapid exchange wallets. The caveat here is that there may be exchange wallets we don't know about yet, and therefore haven't been labelled by services such as Bithomp and XRPScan but they do a great job. At last check a couple of weeks ago, there was a low-level buzz of activity between the partner exchanges, but nothing I'd consider significant.

Here's a summary of some unusual activity over New Years weekend that seemed to fit the pattern of xRapid and bumped Bitso up in the volume rankings significantly. This was super exciting to witness, as Bitso moved up literally 100 places in the rankings as a result of these transactions. But, it was short-lived and I haven't seen it repeat since then. At the time I was convinced it was a liquidity test, but not so sure now. The destination wallet was later confirmed to be Bitso's.

https://twitter.com/behindtheledger/status/1085237315059023872

It seems like xRapid volumes are non-zero but on the spectrum of global traffic, miniscule. Not to be negative; it's just what the data shows. But again, what's a reasonable benchmark?

Bob, to the extent you can, any thoughts on what kinds of volumes and timelines would indicate "good" adoption? And in addition, since xCurrent flows may be potential xRapid flows, what order of magnitude volumes do you think xCurrent is doing at this stage? 

I hope these aren't unfair questions  - thank you!

Edited March 13, 2019 by BehindtheLedger

[Paradox]

Great questions @BehindtheLedger.   I know myself and many others on XRP Chat have been curious about xRapid volume.  It's hard to tell whether it is really "turned on" yet.  Maybe @BobWay can help us understand a little more on this topic. 

[Sharpy]

Great question @BehindtheLedger I would also love to know more about this area. I keep hearing people refer to the switch being 'flicked on' but I cant imagine it would be that simple. Surely once a company is integrated it is then up to them what transactions they put through the ledger so perhaps more of a 'phased approach' rather than a 'flick of the switch type event'?

@BobWay Is there any way of applying filters so we can determine the difference between 'real' transactions and that of testing/exchanges? probably not but worth asking the question.

One last question if I may be so bold? As an outsider now looking in on the crypto space. What is the biggest challenge bar regulation to XRP?

Hope you had a great time catching up with the gang at SxSW

[BehindtheLedger]

On 3/14/2019 at 5:42 PM, Sharpy said:

I keep hearing people refer to the switch being 'flicked on' but I cant imagine it would be that simple. 

As pleasant as it is to think we’ll wake up one day & xRapid will be processing billions of dollars in volume, I don’t think that’s a realistic scenario. But happy to be proven wrong!

[BehindtheLedger]

Updated to reflect some recent activity that ‘looks’ like xRapid 

Edit: and more here:

 

 

Edited March 29, 2019 by BehindtheLedger