Ripple and XRP Target Swift Takeover, Retail Investors Are Bullish on Bitcoin, and Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin Plans Huge Slash in Energy Consumption

Bitcoin

A new study shows Bitcoin and crypto hodlers are in it for the long haul.

According to a new report from DailyFX, 77.5% of retail crypto investors remain long on Bitcoin – the highest number since November of last year.

“Bitcoin: Retail trader data shows 77.5% of traders are net long with the ratio of traders long to short at 3.44 to 1. The number of traders net long is 0.4% lower than yesterday and 6.2% higher from last week, while the number of traders net short is 2.7% lower than yesterday and 6.4% lower from last week.”

A look at Bitcoin’s yearly lows offers a unique perspective on exactly where traders are holding the line.

I've been saying it for years. Don't look at ATH's, look at yearly lows. That will tell you the growth in hodlers.

2012 – $4
2013 – $65
2014 – $200
2015 – $185
2016 – $365
2017 – $780
2018 – $3200

That tells you the growth in the people who won't sell at any price.

— Frogolocalypse (@1stCrassCitizen) December 31, 2018

Ripple and XRP

Meanwhile, Ripple’s chief market strategist Cory Johnson says Ripple is designed to replace Swift and XRP allows people to transfer value. At a crypto conference in November, Johnson described Ripple’s software solutions as a suite of tools designed to replace the international payment system Swift.

“Ripple is meant to be a replacement for Swift – the messaging system that banks use and other things like ACH used to settle transactions. XRP is meant to be a digital way to move value, to move digital money if you will.”

As for XRP, Johnson says it can be used to power instant transactions and ensure far lower fees than the current standard in the world of traditional banking and finance.

“XRP is purely focused on value. It can do Visa-like 1,500 transactions per second. And it’s really equipped to do things in a digital network. As I described at the beginning of our talk, we don’t have digital value right now. When you send someone a Venmo payment, they don’t actually get the money for like 3 to 5 days. They might credit an account, but there’s risk being taken by the company there, and that’s why the fees are so high.

When one of our customers uses XRP to move money from Thailand to Spain, it happens in less than a minute or two, and it’s very accurate and quick to do so, and it wouldn’t be possible without the technology.”

Ethereum

Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin says the platform’s switch to Proof-of-Stake is designed to slash energy consumption by 99%.

In a new interview with IEEE Spectrum, Buterin says Bitcoin’s method of validating transactions, called Proof-of-Work, requires an unnecessary amount of energy. The method forces users that power the network to solve complicated puzzles in an effort to prevent denial-of-service attacks and spam.

“The PoW part is the one that’s consuming these huge amounts of electricity. The blockchain transactions themselves are not super computationally intensive. It’s just verifying digital signatures. It’s not some kind of heavy 3D-matrix map or machine learning on gigabytes of data.”

Buterin hopes public testnets will be up and running with the new technology by the end of 2019.

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Disclaimer: Opinions expressed at The Daily Hodl are not investment advice. Investors should do their due diligence before making any high-risk investments in Bitcoin, cryptocurrency or digital assets. Please be advised that your transfers and trades are at your own risk, and any loses you may incur are your responsibility. The Daily Hodl does not recommend the buying or selling of any cryptocurrencies or digital assets, nor is The Daily Hodl an investment advisor. Please note that The Daily Hodl participates in affiliate marketing.