Monat: September 2023

• Ripple’s Liquidity Hub has now expanded to Australia and Brazil, with users able to tap into the platform to manage their crypto liquidity.
• The Liquidity Hub also now supports USDT and USDC stablecoins.

Ripple has opened up its Liquidity Hub platform to businesses across Brazil and Australia, according to details shared via a blog post published on Thursday.

The Liquidity Hub, which launched in April this year, is Ripple’s solution to the challenges that faced the company’s cross-border payments offering and allows for a simplified access to crypto for businesses.

Customers can tap into the digital asset platform when looking to manage their crypto liquidity in terms of ease of access and cost. The solution can benefit any business operation that wants to unlock an efficient payments experience for its customers, including point-of-sale merchants and crypto ATMs.

“Liquidity is one of those key components that make crypto possible — it underpins every element of crypto, and by extension, Ripple’s business as well as any other company that is interested in leveraging the power of crypto solutions for business,” Brad Chase, Ripple’s Head of Liquidity Products, wrote in a blog post.

According to Ripple, managing liquidity is all about having value “available at the right time, for the right cost, and at the right place to meet customers’ needs.”

Managing liquidity means value is available at the right time, for the right cost, at the right place to meet customers’ needs.

With increased global availability, new features, and improved customer experience, find out what’s new with Liquidity Hub:https://t.co/tLREUSpZOY

— Ripple (@Ripple) September 14, 2023

New features include support for stablecoins

In addition to opening the platform’s availability to users in Brazil and Australia, Ripple Labs announced it had added support for USDT and USDC stablecoins. The blockchain company has also improved the trading UI and service level agreements (SLAs) to streamline operations users such as NFT marketplaces, brokers and crypto ATMs.

Ripple also eyes a sandbox environment and other features for the platform, which Chase said will add to the overall functionality and user experience.

The post Ripple expands Liquidity Hub to Brazil and Australia appeared first on CoinJournal.

• Zilliqa looks to strengthen blockchain infrastructure with strategic alignment with Google Cloud.
• The cloud provider joins Zilliqa’s staked seed node operators to help bolster the network’s scalability, flexibility, resilience, and data availability.
• Zilliqa announced the strategic agreement at TOKEN2049 in Singapore.

Zilliqa had a major announcement yesterday at the TOKEN2049 blockchain conference. As industry players gathered in Singapore for one of the biggest crypto events of the year, Zilliqa’s team took the opportunity to disclose a multiyear strategic alliance with cloud computing giant Google Cloud.

The partnership with Zilliqa will see the L1 blockchain “enhance” its scalability, data availability and resilience. 

ZIL price reacted higher following the news to trade above $0.0164.

Google Cloud becomes staked seed node operator

Per details in a blog post, the collaboration with the Google company means ventures across Zilliqa Group and the broader ecosystem have an opportunity to tap into a robust platform for decentralised applications (dApps) and Web3 services.

Part of the strategic collaboration also involves Google Cloud becoming a Staked Seed Node (SSN) operator, with the company’s participation set to boost Zilliqa’s overall decentralisation.

 “Our strategic alliance with Google Cloud is more than just a technological collaboration; it’s a strategic alignment to further the ambitions of our group of ventures and revenue-generating organizations. Google Cloud’s expertise in infrastructure, combined with their role as a staked seed node partner, underscores our commitment to excellence, both within the Zilliqa Group of companies and across the wider ecosystem,” said Matt Dyer, CEO of Zilliqa Group.

Multiple crypto projects have looked to tap into Google Cloud’s extensive infrastructure and expertise to bolster their networks. 

Yesterday’s announcement by Zilliqa comes just a day after interoperability protocol LayerZero announced integration with the leading cloud services provider. As CoinJournal highlighted, Google Cloud is now the default verifier on the cross-chain communication protocol developed by LayerZero Labs. 

The cloud provider also partnered with Coinbase in October last year, the two firms noting the deal was aimed at promoting the Web3 ecosystem.

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• Deutsche Bank will offer crypto custody services for institutional investors.
• Deutsche Bank in a World Economic Forum paper in 2020 expressed intentions of offering crypto trading.
• The bank has however clarified that it currently does not have plans to offer crypto trading.

Deutsche Bank has partnered with Taurus, a Swiss cryptocurrency firm, to offer digital assets and tokenized financial instruments custody services for institutional clients.

This collaboration marks a significant development as it enables Deutsche Bank to hold a limited selection of cryptocurrencies and tokenized versions of traditional financial assets on behalf of its clients, a capability confirmed by a Deutsche Bank spokesperson. However, the bank has clarified that it currently does not have immediate plans to engage in cryptocurrency trading, despite previously expressing such intentions in a World Economic Forum paper in 2020.

Crypto interest among institutional investors

The cryptocurrency market has faced challenges in recovering from a series of high-profile collapses among leading cryptocurrency firms in the past year, resulting in substantial losses for investors and calls for increased regulatory oversight from lawmakers worldwide.

Nevertheless, numerous mainstream financial institutions are exploring the potential application of blockchain technology, the underlying technology behind cryptocurrencies, for the trading and settling conventional financial assets. Notably, financial institutions like Standard Chartered, BNY Mellon, and Societe Generale already offer cryptocurrency custody services.

Paul Maley, Deutsche Bank’s global head of securities services, emphasized the growing importance of the digital asset space, expected to encompass trillions of dollars in assets, making it a priority for both investors and corporations.

The cryptocurrency market, as per CoinGecko data, is currently valued at approximately $1.1 trillion, down from its peak of just over $3 trillion in November 2021. Maley highlighted that their focus extends beyond cryptocurrencies, as they aim to support clients across the broader digital assets ecosystem.

Maley responding to US regulators’ caution about potential liquidity risks associated with cryptocurrency activities stated that Deutsche Bank is proceeding cautiously, aligning with the spirit and regulations governing this asset class. He emphasized that their product design and custody solutions are structured to mitigate the risk of impacting the bank’s other activities.

The post Deutsche Bank taps Swiss crypto firm Taurus for custody services appeared first on CoinJournal.