Tag: Blockchain

The price of Ripple spiked in mid-September after CNBC reported that the company was moving closer to launching its xRapid product. xRapid, which uses the XRP cryptocurrency as a “bridge” against currencies, allowing payment providers and banks to process cross-border transactions faster and more efficiently.

“A couple of years ago, the narrative was ‘blockchain good, crypto bad,’ but I think what we’re now seeing is that more regulators and policymakers [think of] the whole space in one conjunction…you can not have runways without the airplanes,” Sagar Sabhai, head of regulatory regulations of APAC and the Middle East at Ripple, told CNBC.

Ripple, which has the core mission to “provide one frictionless experience to send money globally using the power of the blockchain,” has faced some criticism from the crypto community at large regarding its centralization, but this doesn’t seem to phase the core team. “Ripple has always been a payments company first, and blockchain has always been in our DNA, but we have never been dogmatic about what we acknowledge to apply…there’s a little bit of blockchain in all of our different products,” said the current CTO of Ripple, Stefan Thomas.

Criticism aside, both XRP and the Ripple platform at large have experienced amazing momentum this year, announcing partnerships with big name financial institutions such as MoneyGram, Santander Group, and American Express. What else is up ahead for this innovative currency and payment settlements platform? Let’s take a look.

Ripple for Good

Ripple’s commitment to streamlining financial transactions extends beyond the corporate sector. Indeed, in addition to the xRapid launch, the company has also recently launched  “Ripple For Good,” dedicated to educate and empower individuals who traditionally have been financially excluded from society. The company has committed $100 million to the program. Ripple For Good will work atop the framework built by RippleWorks, another organization founded by the company dedicated to helping small entrepreneurs scale up rapidly.

“If we are truly committed to transformative global change, we will work to help ensure that innovations in banking and global payments are available everywhere to everyone, among unbanked and underbanked populations and in economies and economic sectors that serve the greater good,” said Head of Social Impact for Ripple, Ken Weber.

The Future of Ripple

October 1st and 2nd, Ripple hosts their SWELL conference in San Francisco. SWELL is meant to connect the world’s leading experts on policy, payments and technology for “the most provocative dialogue in global payments today.” Located in downtown San Francisco, the keynote speaker for the event is President Bill Clinton.

The first day’s agenda deals with the adoption of blockchain technology across traditional banking systems, while the second day tackles the future of e-commerce.

Both a digital currency and a payments platform that has inspired many mainstream partnerships, philanthropy projects, and tremendous enthusiasm from finance markets and leaders in Japan and South Korea, as well as the rest of the world, it seems very likely that momentum will build and prices will continue to rise.

When it comes to saving for retirement, most Americans are concerned that they haven’t saved enough.

According to a study from Northwestern Mutual, they have good reason to be: 78 percent of Americans say that they’re “somewhat” or “extremely” concerned about not having enough money put away for retirement. Just 10 percent of Americans have only a few thousand dollars or less saved for retirement, and more than one American in five, a whopping 21 percent, report having nothing saved for retirement at all.

Some Americans, of course, are in better positions, and a quarter report having more than $200,000 in savings, but the trend isn’t positive: a survey by Bankrate finds that 13 percent have saved less this year than last year, mostly due to falling incomes.

The Roadblocks to Saving

That survey seems to reflect what many economists already know: incomes aren’t rising alongside the cost of consumer goods and household expenses. Bankrate reports that their findings are “consistent with federal data that show real wages have barely budged in decades.” Worse still, the Pew Research Center recently reported that average weekly take home pay goes only as far in terms of purchasing power as average pay forty years ago after adjusting for inflation.

“Stagnant income and rising household expenses mean there is little financial wiggle room for many Americans,” says Greg McBride, CFA, chief financial analyst with Bankrate.com.

How Alternative Assets Come Into Play

While there is no one definitive solution to solving this lack of “financial wiggle room,” alternative assets  are becoming increasingly appealing to those looking for other ways to grow their money. And although they can be seen as high risk, they also have the potential to yield profitable rewards.

“Proponents of these non-traditional investments maintain the average investor will now have access to assets not correlated to the stock market,” says Investopedia, “offering diversification and potentially higher returns when compared to mutual funds, stocks and bonds.”

In addition, investing in alternative assets can also be viewed as an effective way of managing risk within a portfolio. By incorporating them alongside equity, fixed income and real assets, alternative investments act as a fourth asset group and can help to smooth the volatility of a portfolio and unlock return streams different and distinct from the other asset groups,” says Adam Taback, head of global alternative investments at the Wells Fargo Investment Institute.

Bitcoin as an Alternative Asset

According to Investopedia, there are two essential factors for portfolio diversification done right. The first is investing in several securities for each asset, and the second is investing in assets that are not significantly correlated to one another, in order to minimize the impact of any negative conditions that could inversely impact your portfolio. Interestingly enough, according to research from ArkInvest and Coinbase, Bitcoin is the only asset class that maintains consistently low correlations with every other asset, distinguishing itself along with real estate, fine art, and wine as an alternative asset to look out for.

Recently, Medium posted an article with an incredible infographic that demonstrates the incredible progress that blockchain technology has made in disrupting traditional working processes as we know them.

Here are a few of the industries that have the potential to reap huge benefits from the blockchain.

Video & GameDev

Blockchain technology could democratize game development and provide a decentralized network for multiplayer functionality hosting. This could potentially save game studios a lot of money, as multiplayer mode is traditionally quite expensive, since it requires that developers support a high volume of players from around the world.

AdTech

Blockchain technology has the potential to bring more transparency and security to a sector that has been fraught with hackers. Additionally, the system’s encryption would be better equipped to detect empty bot clicks and other factors that could damage an advertising campaign.

Art 

Digital arts can be easily duplicated or stolen, but blockchain technology may be able to solve this problem by creating a limited number of copies and binding them to unique blocks to prove ownership.

Ultimately, these are only just a few of many industries that stand to tremendously benefit from the power of blockchain technology, and this Medium series is doing a remarkable job of chronicling all of the strides in the development of decentralized technology as it works to transform life, and business, as we know it.

Blockchain technology may have initially been a tool for the finance sector, but other industries have been putting the technology to good use as well. The real estate market uses blockchain to make large and confusing transactions more transparent, and the healthcare industry employs it to share data across disparate networks without sacrificing patient confidentiality. Now, some visionaries are starting to see the potential of the technology when it comes to revolutionizing social media.

Given that the blockchain enforces transparency and heightened security, two qualities that have been lacking in social media, it makes sense that people would gravitate towards the technology in the social space. Let’s learn more about recent updates since the nature of blockchain as a ledger that is incorruptible, enforces transparency, and bypasses censorship is perfectly suited for an audience hungry for the credibility and accountability missing from social media in today’s fake news climate, as well as a desire to own their own data, or, at the very least, keep the big name players from owning it.

Facebook and Twitter Express Interest in Decentralized Technology

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made clear in his January 2018 “state of the union” post that Facebook would begin to explore blockchain technology. Citing the first four words of the Facebook motto, “give power to the people.” Zuckerberg explained that the plan to explore blockchain stemmed from being “interested to go deeper and study the positive and negative aspects of these technologies, and how best to use them in our services.”

Meanwhile, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has repeatedly advocated for both crypto and blockchain technology. Earlier this year, he predicted that Bitcoin would become the single currency of the internet in the near future, and separately testified before a Congressional committee and said that distributed ledgers could be used to stop scams and misinformation. “We haven’t gone as deep as we’d like just yet in understanding how we may apply this technology to the problems we’re facing at Twitter, but we do have people within the company thinking about it today,” Dorsey said.

The New Social Space

While the giants slowly turn their attention to blockchain technology applications in their platforms, smaller startups blaze ahead. Innovative founders and users alike are discovering the ways in which transparent and decentralized social media are disrupting the idea of what social networking can be – and who stands to profit.

Here are just a few examples of sites making use of blockchain technology to connect users and information.

Sapien

On the surface, Sapien Network sounds like a traditional social media platform: the site specializes in sharing news and other items much in the same way that Facebook and Google does, though CEO Ankit Bhatia stated at a 2017 conference that they want to reinvent social from the ground up.

Their mission, according to a recent Medium post, is “to champion users and truth, not financial gain, as the core of its social network.”

Since Blockchain tech is democratic and transparent, the post says, it allows Sapiens to reward “millions of content creators and curators without any centralized intermediaries.”

Built on the Ethereum blockchain, the platform rewards users who create quality content with SPN tokens, which can be used in the marketplace.  It also allows user to both retain control of their own data as well as monetize their own posts, unlike the large platforms we’re familiar with today.

Sola

With 700,000 users and counting, Sola also operates on the concept of tokens. Governed by a combination of users and AI, Sola, according to the website, “spreads information like a viral disease to the most interested users, applying AI algorithms combined with users reactions. Quality content can easily reach the whole Sola user base. Users post news, stories and entertainment cards, Sola takes care of the rest.”

What Sola does is convert social engagement, like comments, likes, and shares, into tokens called SOL that can be used both internally and externally to the Sola platform, allowing users at any level of fame to profit from creating quality content.

Indorse

On social platforms like LinkedIn, any user can make a claim about their own skill set or the skills of others. On Indorse, the currency here is social currency, and the site uses AI, among other tools, to make sure you’ve got the goods.

Users on Indorse are verified and rewarded for verifiably “indorsing” the skills of others. According to David Moskowitz, co-founder and CEO at Indorse, “If someone is an expert in NodeJS, they put up a claim and attach proof such as their GitHub repos. Other members in the same domain on Indorse verify it. Based on the consensus, the claim is either ‘indorsed’ or flagged.” Once again, the currency here is a token, this time called IND, which can be used on the site to purchase advertising and other services.

Blockchain social media is still in its infancy. However, as the demand for accountability from social media giants grows, alongside the desire to keep personal data out of the hands of unnecessary middlemen, the window of opportunity for transparent, blockchain-based social media widens. It remains to be seen whether or not any of these new social spaces will be able to connect as broadly among users as the established giants – and, if so, whether or not they’ll be able to avoid the same pitfalls.