From Bitcoin vs. The Banks to a tempting offer from Ripple, here’s a look at some of the stories breaking in the world of crypto.
Bitcoin
An advisor at McAdam Financial says a recent experience at Bank of America highlights a key selling point of cryptocurrencies. Pat Chirchirillo says the bank charged him $10 for making more than six transfers in a single month. The banking fee is far more than the cost of transferring the same amount of funds using cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Chirchirillo’s crypto estimate: 30 cents for six transfers combined.
According to BitInfoCharts, the current transaction fee on the Bitcoin network averages $0.17, which would add up to $1.02 for six transfers, just shy of 90% cheaper than Bank of America.
Ripple and XRP
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse says he’s open to hiring the outgoing CEO at Swift, Gottfried Leibbrandt.
At the Paris Fintech Festival, the two joined a panel on the future of cross-border payments. Leibbrandt talked about the legacy he will leave at Swift. When he finished, Garlinghouse said, “Ripple is hiring!” teasing the possibility that Leibbrandt could join the San Francisco-based blockchain and crypto payments startup, an outspoken rival.
Garlinghouse has said Ripple plans to replace Swift, which is the current standard for cross-border payments between banks and financial institutions.
Ethereum
Organizers at the biggest Ethereum-based hackathon in Denver, Colorado are preparing to utilize blockchain in a big way.
“At ETHDenver, every attendee will receive a swag bag at the door which includes a physical coin much like the one Maker distributed at many events last year. On this coin, however, people will find a private key embedded in a QR code, which once scanned, presents them with a web wallet running in their phone’s normal, default web browser. It will hold buffiDai, a special ETHDenver localcoin used to pay for food, swag, drinks, activities, and NFT’s at the event, as well as being accepted at some local businesses.
This means that as soon as the web page loads, people can walk right up to a food truck, scan a code from a menu, and walk away with a hotdog. If people lose their phone or accidentally ‘burn’ the wallet, they can simply rescan the physical coin to continue where they left off.”
Litecoin
Litecoin founder Charlie Lee says developers are hard at work determining which privacy features they will add to the network. So far, the team hasn’t reached a final decision on which technology they will use.
Stellar
A new Stellar-based blockchain gifting and shopping platform is now available on iOS and Android.
The team at Swych says the platform lets users instantly send friends and family gift cards. The receiver can then choose whether to redeem that gift card or switch it to another gift card they’d prefer to have instead.
Tron
Tron’s BitTorrent Token (BTT) is releasing more information on its upcoming exchange listings. The token is designed to be utilized with the file-sharing platform BitTorrent to reward users that share files.
So far, Tron says BTT will be listed on Binance, OKEx, Upbit, KuCoin, CoinTiger, Bitbnx and TRX Market.
Cardano
Emurgo, the development arm of Cardano, has released a series of slides on the Yoroi wallet. The wallet is available as a Chrome and Firefox extension and, according to the presentation, more than 12% of all Cardano (ADA) is currently stored using the wallet.
NEO
YouTube’s BlockchainBrad just released a new interview with NEO CEO Da Hongfei. The two talk about Neo 3.0 upgrades, Microsoft, hard forks, infrastructure, community concerns and more.