Today on Altcoins This Week we discuss Thomson Reuters’ recent partnership, Ripple teaming up with Madonna and Clinton and much more.
Ripple Courts Madonna and Clinton
Ripple has been busy making friends with the powerful and famous this week. Bill Clinton will be the keynote speaker at this year’s Swell conference, which will take place in October in San Francisco. Swell, now in its second year, “connects the world’s leading experts on policy, payments and technology for the most provocative dialog in global payments today.” The former President’s views on cryptocurrencies are bound to attract attention, particularly since news broke last month that Russian operatives allegedly used Bitcoin to part-fund their campaign to derail Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid.
Meanwhile, Madonna has partnered with Ripple to raise funds for orphans in Malawi. The material girl’s charity, Raising Malawi, is hoping to raise $660,000 in a campaign organised to coincide with the pop legend’s 60th birthday later this month. Ripple’s Senior Vice President of Business Operations, said in a statement that Ripple will match the donation raised for what he called “some of the world’s most underserved children.”
Binance Makes First Public Acquisition
Crypto exchange Binance has announced that it has acquired Trust Wallet, a mobile wallet startup. This is the first public acquisition by the Japan-based coin exchange platform.
Binance made the purchase, according to its statement, “ to provide a better service and to enhance the safety for all of our users.” It called Trust Wallet, which was founded only late last year, a company that “has built a reputation for security and has held itself to the guiding principles that it will never access user wallets, hold private keys or ask for personal information.”
XRP To Be Base Currency of New SF Exchange
In a busy week for Ripple, San Francisco exchange service DCEX has announced it plans to launch the first digital currency exchange to use XRP as its base currency. Traders are invited to register now, with the platform hoping to be fully operational in the next few weeks.
A total of fifteen currencies will be available as trading pairs with XRP, and TrueUSD the stable coin of choice, rather than Tether. DCEX said it favoured XRP partly because of the lower trading fees associated with the cryptocurrency.
Thomson Reuters Teams with CryptoCompare
Mass media giant Thomson Reuters are to offer insights into the ups and downs of the volatile cryptocurrency market in partnership with CryptoCompare. The Canadian multinational will track the top fifty coins, giving investors a detailed oversight of the market.
Eikon, as the platform will be called, is being launched in response to growing demand from customers of Thomson Reuters, who are demanding detailed market analysis, despite the recent downturn in crypto prices. CryptoCompare CEO Charles Hayter said he was “excited to enter into this partnership with Thomson Reuters” saying; “we have always sought to provide transparency to this market and this partnership provides a great opportunity for the institutional investor community to access not only our data, but also to benefit from our experience and insight.”
The Markets
Altcoins across the board suffered significant losses this week. Ether (ETH), the largest Altcoin, opened Monday at $466 but was back to $433 by close of Tuesday. Wednesday was no better, with a low of $410 and indications that it could be trading for under the $400 mark by the end of the week. XRP was down, but not to the same extent as most other top 100 coins this week, its opening of $0.453 cut down to a low of $0.427 as markets suffered on Tuesday and Wednesday, but XRP recovered slightly to close the half-week at $.0445. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) saw the end of its upswing: its Monday opening of $822 seemed like a distant memory when it was trading for $744 on Wednesday. By midweek close, it was changing hands for $769. EOS opened on Monday at $8.34 but its fortunes turned and it had dropped back to $7.37 by close of Tuesday, then to a low of $6.98 on Wednesday before closing at $7.26. Stellar (XLM) was one of the biggest movers in July, but it couldn’t resist market forces this week, $0.308 was the opening point Monday, but $0.26 to $0.28 was where the bulk of the trading was made in the early part of this week, Stellar closing Wednesday at $0.276
