What a day, first Amazon announced it was teaming up with Wall Street banks to formalize an Amazon branded checking account type program for young people. Meanwhile PayPal filed for a patent related to Bitcoin.
The company’s patent filing was for an “expedited virtual currency transaction system”. PayPal is definately eyeing a way to boost the speed of cryptocurrency payments; with speculation even the likes of Facebook might enter the cryptocurrency realm. Coinbase has seen customer complaints more than double in January, as the its number of users surged in December 2017.
Bitcoin’s rebound from an ugly start to 2018 is up to its highest point in a while at $11,677.80 but it’s Ripple that is truly surging of late up again over $1.04.
Coinbase Will Likely Start Supporting Ripple
Rumours that Coinbase will start to support Ripple have added to the fuel of speculation around it’s progress. South Korean banks have okayed Ripple as it enters the mainstream already there after reports of successful tests of Ripple remittance.
The price of the third-largest cryptocurrency Ripple, was up by total value is up 16 percent based on the Coinbase rumor.
Cross Border Payments set to be Disrupted
It’s safe to say that major U.S. exchange could be next on the list to add support for XRP trading. We know that in terms of order of magnitude, the dollars transferred in the cross-border payment market unsurprisingly, dwarfs the value of every market in existence. This means of course that Ripple could integrate into the mainstream banking infrastrucutre the easiest of any cryptocurrency since the value proposition in the real-world is so high.
As recently as the end of 2015, balances tied up globally in nostro accounts exceeded $27 trillion. As the world shifts from wealth stranded in the fossil fuel economy and moves to the green tech economy, that will represent a major shift of funds. In that sense, Ripple could have a very concrete future.
The traditional cross-border payment systems was always going to be one of the ways that distributed ledger technology as going to disrupt, enter blockchain solutions.
There are over 39 Billion XRP coins already in circulation so it makes perfect sense for Coinbase to start to integrate with them. Stellar and Ripple are hot in 2018, and the price is right. It’s market cap is now about $41.05 billion. So far Coinbase offers trading for bitcoin, bitcoin cash, litecoin and ether, so by adding XRP, it could enable a new outlet for retail trading.
Coinbase is the leading U.S. marketplace for buying and selling major digital currencies, though this could change as the cryptocurrency markets and apps are still very nascent.