Kategorie: Crypto News

Although this has been great for the majority of cryptocurrencies, it has not been the case for some coins like Ripple (XRP). It started the day with a 2% drop before assuming the current surge of about 1.96% at the time of writing.

Ripple has had a roller coaster and no wonder the general price change for the month and week seem to be that low while other currencies and making double, triple, and even quadruple price changes.

In this article, we will focus on some of the issues affecting Ripple price.

Why did the XRP price fall?

Although Ripple has been seeing some price gains lately, the gains have in most cases been erased as quickly as they are made. Today, XRP started the day on a drop before turning green with a rise of about 1% by the time of writing.

But what are the factors affecting the price of Ripple’s token, XRP? Why is the price not rising even at a time when investors feel it’s an altcoins’ season? This article tries to explain what could be causing the drop in the XRP price and it has focused on the most recent development, which is the recent withdrawal of 1 billion XRP coins.

Withdrawal of 1 billion XRP funds

Today, Ripple DLT service provider withdrew a staggering 1 billion XRP coins from escrow on the first day of a new month in order to add some of it to the circulating supply.

It is important to note that Ripple has had a routine of withdrawing a lump sum of XRPs from its Escrow account on the first day of each month to inject more coins into circulation.  However, while the move has always had a positive impact on the price of XRP, this month has been different with the process having a negative impact on its market price. Ripple dropped by 2% earlier today immediately after the withdrawal was made.

WhaleStats, the largest crypto fund tracker, confirmed that Ripple withdrawal was carried out in its escrow in two installments of 500 million XRP each. According to reports by WhaleStats and details from Ripple, the withdrawal was carried out in the early morning hours today at an approximate cost of $811.39 million.

Following the news, Ripple’s market capitalization dropped to $39.3 billion losing its 6th position to Solana.

The post Ripple (XRP) price dropped 2% today: why did the XRP price drop? appeared first on Coin Journal.

Celer price has been on the rise since March 13 and it has gained more than 96.8% over the last fourteen days. At the time of writing, Celer (CELR) was trading at $0.07482 down from a daily high of $0.08257 though still in the green with a rise of 9.23% in the last 24 hours.

It has been an incredible week for the majority of the altcoins with some shooting to the moon following some huge announcements. The likes of Bitcoin also saw significant price gains hitting three months high since it plummeted following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February.

This article focuses on the forces behind the current CELR price rally.

Why is the CELR price rising?

Before getting into what is behind the price surge, it is important to first explain what Celer is.

In a nutshell, Celer, or Celer Network, is a layer-2 scaling solution designed to provide simple, fast, and secure off-chain transactions for smart contracts and payments. Its native token is CELR.

The main reasons why the CELR price is surging are CERL selection as an interoperability layer, inclusion of the new blockchain in its cBridge products, and its support for Conflux eSpace.

• CELR selected as an interoperability layer

Since CELR uses off-chain transaction handling to reduce transaction cost while increasing processing speed, it has been selected as an interoperability layer for BSC Application Sidechain (BAS) on BNB Smart Chain, thus increasing the value of CELR.

• Celer support for Conflux eSpace

The Network has added Conflux eSpace bridging functionality to its protocol to provide users with the choice of blockchain interoperability.

Celer Network announced via a blog post on 29th March that it will start its integration by offering five items as their kick-off support for Conflux eSpace as they prepare to add more assets in the future. Besides, Celer has added over 20 blockchains to its ecosystem.

• Inclusion of the new blockchain in its cBridge products

cBridge, one of the Celer Network’s unique products, has added a new blockchain to aid cross-chain transactions across blockchains. This will allow customers to connect their assets across the Conflux network and Ethereum as well as allow secure connection of two blockchains for crypto assets.

The post Why is Celer (CELR) price rallying? appeared first on Coin Journal.

Citi’s ‘Metaverse and Money’ outlook suggests the virtual world ecosystem could grow to encompass 5 billion users.

Citi has released a new report that predicts the Metaverse could grow to reach a total addressable market (TAM) of up to $13 trillion in the next few years.

In its Global Perspectives & Solutions (GPS) report released on Thursday, the bank’s analysts say the spike in interest in the Metaverse has the potential to push the virtual world’s economy to more than ten trillion dollars in the next seven or so years.

A ‘device-agnostic’ Metaverse

As the next iteration of the internet, the Metaverse will combine both physical and digital world reality. The immersive experiences will not be purely Virtual Reality-targeted, but one that’s “device-agnostic.” Per the GPS report, this will allow access via various devices, including smartphones, PCs, and game consoles.

Such a Metaverse could expand quickly and count up to five billion users, the report noted.

“Based on our definition, we estimate the total addressable market for the Metaverse economy could grow to between $8 trillion and $13 trillion by 2030,” the bank said in the report.

A few issues to address 

The concept of the Metaverse is not entirely new, although ‘real’ interest in it only began to take root last year following the explosion of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook) and other Big Tech companies’ entry into the ecosystem only served to jump the interest across the world.

In 2022, developments in the virtual world space are moving to a stage where a lot is coalescing into Web3. Use cases that continue to gather momentum are in areas such as art, media, and commerce among others.

But while Citi analysts see the Metaverse as “the new iteration of the internet,” they believe there are issues that might need addressing to aid further innovation and growth. 

This will likely be driven by greater attention towards the ecosystem from governments and other global regulators, and the bank believes players within the Metaverse space need to be ready to address issues around money laundering, property rights, and the use of digital assets and decentralised finance (DeFi).

The post Citi: Metaverse could grow into a $13 trillion economy appeared first on Coin Journal.

The firm says sanctions on Russia could see central banks look to ‘change their reserve mix.”

Bitcoin’s value could rise to at least $1.3 million in the event the cryptocurrency ended up as de facto global reserve asset, experts at US investment firm VanEck have said.

VanEck’s Eric Fine (Head of Active EM Debt) and Natalia Gurushina (Chief Economist, Emerging Markets Fixed Income Strategy,), said the prediction is pegged on an attempt at quantifying what would happen if there emerged “new gold or Bitcoin-backed currency regimes.”

Sanctions on Russia mean central banks will act

In a report published on 30 March, the VanEck executives postulate that the global reserve system may have changed dramatically due to the sanctions imposed on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. 

Russia said last week that it would accept Bitcoin for its oil and gas.

“Central banks are likely to change their reserve mix to the detriment of dollars (and euros and yen) and the enhancement of something else, to one extent or another. US, Eurozone, and Japanese sanctions on the Central Bank of Russia essentially “disappeared” Russia’s dollar, euro, and yen reserves. As a result, some central banks—and private actors—will be diversifying their reserves.”

Bitcoin as a global reserve asset could reach $4.8 million

Using calculations based on the “global” price for Bitcoin and divided by the total BTC supply, the team was able to theorize where its value could be if it were a global reserve. 

The VanEck executives say they applied the same concept to gold- which has a common denominator as Bitcoin in having finite supply- to arrive at potential prices per ounce, the experts noted.

“The bottom-line is that the upside for gold and Bitcoin is potentially dramatic. Specifically, the framework estimates gold prices of around $31,000 per ounce and potential Bitcoin prices of around $1,300,000 per coin.”

According to the insights report, making adjustments to the calculations from the base M0 to the broader and more common M2, with “greater strains on financial and monetary systems generate even higher prices,” they explained.

VanEck says Bitcoin’s implied price based on the global M2 assessment suggests a value of $4.8 million per coin. For gold, that jumps to around $105k per ounce.

While the firm gives these predictions a big “IF”, it says the more likely scenario is around the Chinese Yuan becoming the new contender for a reserve currency.

Bitcoin was trading at around $45,000 with its value 4.8% down in the past 24 hours, according to tp data on CoinGecko. Gold, on the other hand, was 1% down at $1,934 per ounce on 1 April (8:40 am ET).

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