BitPay Chief Says Bakkt and Fidelity Will Power Bitcoin Bull Run, Plus Ripple and XRP, Tron, Ethereum, VeChain, IOTA: Crypto News Alert

From the price of Bitcoin in 2019 to Ripple’s plan to overtake Swift, here’s a look at some of the stories breaking in the world of crypto.

Bitcoin

The COO of BitPay says Fidelity and Bakkt will push enough institutional money into the crypto market to trigger a bull run in 2019.

Fidelity’s crypto trading platform and custody solution for qualified investors launched last month. Meanwhile, Bakkt’s new physically-backed Bitcoin futures product is set to launch in January.

Sonny Singh told Bloomberg he thinks the two companies will help push the price of Bitcoin to $15,000 – $20,000 over the next year.

The latest ConsenSys-sponsored Week in Ethereum blog post is out.

This week’s edition covers new protocol updates and news on a number of Ethereum-based platforms including Status, Golem and Aragon.

Ripple and XRP

Ripple’s managing director for India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and North Africa just sat down for a fireside chat at the Bahrain FinTech Bay conference.

Navin Gupta talked about Ripple’s goals to take on the global payment network Swift and bring the payments industry into the digital age.

Meanwhile, the fiat-to-XRP platform XRParrot is off to a fast start.

The web portal allows users in Europe to turn cash into crypto without using an exchange, processing about $50,000 in euro in its first three days online.

Tron

DappRadar just added support for decentralized apps on the Tron (TRX) network.

Users can track all Tron-based apps and check metrics such as the daily number of users, trading volume and the number of daily and weekly transactions.

IOTA

The IOTA Foundation is taking measures to slowly remove the IOTA network coordinator, which helps prevent double spends, but could leave the network vulnerable to attacks.

“We have made good progress, and we are proud to share openly the state of our research and plans for moving IOTA to the next stage of life: a Coordinator-free Tangle.”

VeChain

The VeChain-based Esports startup Plair says it raised $22 million and closed out a successful ICO.

The platform is set to launch in March. It aims to let users create and join esports tournaments, combining features found on Twitch, Discord and Steam, as well as allow developers to build decentralized gaming apps in its blockchain ecosystem.