Ripple XRP: Expanding Payment Activity in Africa Xago Utilizing XRP to Move Money Across Africa (Reason for latest pump?)

[Crypt0fin 24]

 

[Julian_Williams 12,910]

South African payment rails - that's more good news

[lll_lll 503]

One among many reasons.

[King34Maine 2,261]

1 hour ago, Julian_Williams said:

South African payment rails - that's more good news

What's even more interesting is that Xago has received significant investment from Capitec Bank, the largest retail bank in South Africa, and a VC firm called Empowerment Capital Investment Partners to expand their services into the broader African marketplace. Wonder if Ripple will tap Xago to be a ODL exchange. Afterall, they serve as an XRP Ledger Gateway. On a Moneyweb podcast (06:03 - 07:00), one of Xago's co-founders, Mark Churnside, said that the company is currently in on-going discussions with over 25 global exchanges integration with the Xago platform to open up South Africa crypto market place. Mark goes on to say that they have been working with the appropriate South African financial authorities/regulators regarding the rules-of-engagement for their cross-border payments business down to the point of sale for retail clients.

[SquaryBone 815]

13 hours ago, Crypt0fin said:

 

The price going up is just gambling/speculation likely. Or someone with insider knowledge but I doubt that since I expect people with this kind of money that would move the price to be more sophisticated and so not buy all at once. I do see a small uptrend on ODL traffic but that's still waaaay to low to explain a pump. And that growth is not exponential either.

Feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Hey last time BTC went to 20k XRP went to 3.5$, and now it's lower than the start of the previous rally so it has more room to grow.
I'm not saying it couldn't go back to previous ATH but again there will be nothing that explains the price since utility is almost non-existent.

[EcneitapLatnem 6,259]

[King34Maine 2,261]

1 hour ago, SquaryBone said:

The price going up is just gambling/speculation likely. Or someone with insider knowledge but I doubt that since I expect people with this kind of money that would move the price to be more sophisticated and so not buy all at once. I do see a small uptrend on ODL traffic but that's still waaaay to low to explain a pump. And that growth is not exponential either.

Feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Hey last time BTC went to 20k XRP went to 3.5$, and now it's lower than the start of the previous rally so it has more room to grow.
I'm not saying it couldn't go back to previous ATH but again there will be nothing that explains the price since utility is almost non-existent.

I personally think most of the recent price appreciation for XRP is a combination of a few things:

1. The primary reason, I believe, Is the pending Spark token disbursement from Flare Network.
2. Institutional players slowly coming into the space + retail investors who were on the sidelines and suddenly saw crypto prices start to trend positively and FOMO'ed in at the last minute.
3.  Also, the liquidity for XRP in each ODL corridors is up. They're not at ATH levels yet, but are moving in the right direction after being stagnant there for several months.
4. Finally, we know that during the 2nd quarter of 2020 Ripple began re-purchasing XRP from secondary markets (i.e. acting as a market maker) to hedge the price fluctuation risk associated with using XRP  for their ODL participants.

[Crypt0fin 24]

2 hours ago, SquaryBone said:

The price going up is just gambling/speculation likely. Or someone with insider knowledge but I doubt that since I expect people with this kind of money that would move the price to be more sophisticated and so not buy all at once. I do see a small uptrend on ODL traffic but that's still waaaay to low to explain a pump. And that growth is not exponential either.

Feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Hey last time BTC went to 20k XRP went to 3.5$, and now it's lower than the start of the previous rally so it has more room to grow.
I'm not saying it couldn't go back to previous ATH but again there will be nothing that explains the price since utility is almost non-existent.

I could see XRP going to $1 if it hits $0.75 this cycle but other than that I do not see XRP hitting its ATH as there is just too much more of it than there was at the ATH. There would need to be lots of institutional players with retail adoption to push XRP past it's ATH. That's just an opinion though I could be wrong. I was somewhat off in my conservative analysis of BTC this year. I said it would hit $12K - $14K but it is already touching it's ATH. The reason why BTC is near its ATH and XRP is not is due to the regulatory clarity and overall demand due to scarcity. 

[benstr 160]

4 hours ago, King34Maine said:

I personally think most of the recent price appreciation for XRP is a combination of a few things:

You forgot one more item..

This recent Ripple job listing.

Sr. Director, Central Bank Engagements

THE ROLE: 

Ripple is looking for a proven leader to lead our strategy, partnerships and project work with central banks around the world with an initial focus on supporting their central bank digital currency (CBDC) initiatives on XRP Ledger.

 

[WuWei 1,446]

7 hours ago, SquaryBone said:

The price going up is just gambling/speculation likely. Or someone with insider knowledge but I doubt that since I expect people with this kind of money that would move the price to be more sophisticated and so not buy all at once. I do see a small uptrend on ODL traffic but that's still waaaay to low to explain a pump. And that growth is not exponential either.

Feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Hey last time BTC went to 20k XRP went to 3.5$, and now it's lower than the start of the previous rally so it has more room to grow.
I'm not saying it couldn't go back to previous ATH but again there will be nothing that explains the price since utility is almost non-existent.

I might tend to agree with this if it weren't for my observations of fiat leak yesterday. I leave fiat leak running in the background on my computer as it's often kinda fun to watch what the trends are, however, yesterday I noticed something different. Those little "bubbles" that go streaming up from the currency abbreviations listed along the bottom, have previously been associated with only a few countries. Yesterday, I noticed ones from Brazil, Russia, the UAE, Singapore, Thailand, and South Africa. This was definitely a change from what's been the "normal."  As xrp's price, for whatever reason, has more than doubled here recently, so have all those pools of liquidity. I've gotta wonder if that huge increase in liquidity hasn't now reached a threshold level of utility necessary for more widespread adoption. 

Edited November 22, 2020 by WuWei

[King34Maine 2,261]

9 hours ago, benstr said:

You forgot one more item..

This recent Ripple job listing.

Sr. Director, Central Bank Engagements

THE ROLE: 

Ripple is looking for a proven leader to lead our strategy, partnerships and project work with central banks around the world with an initial focus on supporting their central bank digital currency (CBDC) initiatives on XRP Ledger.

 

You're absolutely right. Ripple posting this Sr. Director for CB Engagements is very bullish for not only XRP, but the XRPL. It tells me that Ripple has enough interest from multiple CBs that warrants creating a Director-level position, under the umbrella of RippleX, to build out a dedicated team focus solely on CBs.  Ripple has always been at the forefront with respect to educating and gauging the general pulse of which direction CBs were leaning with regards to CBDCs and blockchain going back to 2017 when they hosted World’s Central Banks to Explore Next Generation of Payments. When Brad G. talked about how several Central Banks have approached the company for guidance regarding the issuance of stable coins on the XRPL on a recent podcast interview (@ about the 47:42 mark), I was a bit shocked. This position confirms that CBDCs and stable coin issuance on the XRPL is much much closer than I once thought.

Another interesting job listing was the Chief Economist: 

it's always a good sign of a fintech/blockchain company's growth and maturation when they start bolstering, what I like to call, their "Think Tank" and intellectual leadership relating to all aspects of traditional monetary policies and macro/crypto-economics within/external to the organization.

Edited November 23, 2020 by King34Maine

[WuWei 1,446]

There's some very strange flows going on, that's for sure. Yesterday, utilizing a maps overlay, I was attempting to trace where some of these flows were ultimately ending up, as many of them didn't appear to be over land masses. Ultimately I determined that one stream was ending up in the Azores while another looked to be going to Bermuda. Today I've identified a stream going off the western U.S. coast to who knows where. Another stream was ending up off the west coast of Africa, presumably in the Cabo Verde islands, and yet still another appeared to be going to Ascension island.  Idk if the accuracy of the Fiat Leak map streams is anything to base any sleuthing on, but if it is, then I'll go out on a limb here and predict that something major is going on far beyond xrp merely riding on btc's coattails or simply due to speculation. Go to Fiat Leak, look for yourselves, and then tell me that I'm just making something out of nothing - I just don't get it. I'm still confused, however after adjusting my window size in various manners, it shifts the end destination of the bubble flows, however, they still very much appear to be ending up on islands. It's bizzare it sure would be nice to be able to determine where these are ultimately ending up.

Edited November 22, 2020 by WuWei

[LungiDevil 53]

4 hours ago, WuWei said:

There's some very strange flows going on, that's for sure. Yesterday, utilizing a maps overlay, I was attempting to trace where some of these flows were ultimately ending up, as many of them didn't appear to be over land masses. Ultimately I determined that one stream was ending up in the Azores while another looked to be going to Bermuda. Today I've identified a stream going off the western U.S. coast to who knows where. Another stream was ending up off the west coast of Africa, presumably in the Cabo Verde islands, and yet still another appeared to be going to Ascension island.  Idk if the accuracy of the Fiat Leak map streams is anything to base any sleuthing on, but if it is, then I'll go out on a limb here and predict that something major is going on far beyond xrp merely riding on btc's coattails or simply due to speculation. Go to Fiat Leak, look for yourselves, and then tell me that I'm just making something out of nothing - I just don't get it. I'm still confused, however after adjusting my window size in various manners, it shifts the end destination of the bubble flows, however, they still very much appear to be ending up on islands. It's bizzare it sure would be nice to be able to determine where these are ultimately ending up.

Dude/Dudette... That's just a random animation. 

[SquaryBone 815]

21 hours ago, King34Maine said:

I personally think most of the recent price appreciation for XRP is a combination of a few things:

1. The primary reason, I believe, Is the pending Spark token disbursement from Flare Network.
2. Institutional players slowly coming into the space + retail investors who were on the sidelines and suddenly saw crypto prices start to trend positively and FOMO'ed in at the last minute.
3.  Also, the liquidity for XRP in each ODL corridors is up. They're not at ATH levels yet, but are moving in the right direction after being stagnant there for several months.
4. Finally, we know that during the 2nd quarter of 2020 Ripple began re-purchasing XRP from secondary markets (i.e. acting as a market maker) to hedge the price fluctuation risk associated with using XRP  for their ODL participants.

Yeah liquidity index/utility-scan is up over the past few weeks. But not by large amounts. I wouldn't correlate that increase with the increase in price. I wonder if it would have to do with people using XRP to go in and out of BTC. BTW the utility volume is  still insanely lower in comparison with total volume.

[KarmaCoverage 4,199]

@King34Maine FYI, Adrian who has had a lead in ILP is in South Africa, and Bill Gate's Mojoloop project (its on GitHub) was essentially a copy/paste of ILP. I believe that his influence back in 2014, is what lead to ILP being created, and the whole idea of an IoV, ie a network of ledgers/blockchains. Then Mojoloop showed up and Adrain took a lead role. There was even something I found and let him know about that probably should not have been public, so he took it down. If I remember right it was a link to a financial institution.