Crypto News Round-Up November 8

HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL
Santa Claus Rally Incoming. Maybe. Maybe Not.

Mati Greenspan, senior market analyst at eToro believes there are early indications of a ‘Santa Claus rally’ following BTC’s recent price increase. “In traditional markets, it’s very common to see a stock rally leading up to the end of the year due to the increased activity in the private sector during the holidays,” he wrote. “It may be too early to say this, after all, we’ve only seen very moderate crypto gains this week, but it is very possible that we might see a Santa Claus rally in the crypto markets.” He said the upcoming Bitcoin Cash hard fork could be the catalyst.

HYPE
Companies Dropping The Term ‘Blockchain’ Due to Hype

You’ve heard of ‘green washing’ where companies pretend to be environmentally friendly? Now there’s ‘blockchain washing’ where companies pretend to use blockchain to cash in on the hype around the technology (see Long Island Iced Tea company’s name change to Long Blockchain Corp). It’s gotten so bad that Forrester Research has found another group of companies are now dropping the term ‘blockchain’ entirely to avoid being associated with it, in favour of “distributed ledger technology’. The report also predicts a slowdown in adoption called the ‘blockchain winter’ and that cryptocurrencies will be surpassed by the tokenization of assets.

PAYMENTS
Bithumb Partners with ‘Asian Amazon’, Qoo10 To Launch Payments Service

Leading South Korean virtual currency exchange Bithumb has partnered with major Asian e-commerce platform Qoo10, dubbed the ‘Asian Amazon’, to provide a cryptocurrency payment service. The two companies signed a contract in August and continued to work on the partnership which will make it possible for users to purchase products from Qoo10 using the Bithumb Cache, where Bithumb customers can convert their funds to use for payments with their password.

STABLECOIN
Japan’s First Stablecoin

With the increasing demand for stablecoins, the First Bank of Toyama has contributed by launching its own pilot project — the First Bank Coin (FBC). This will be pegged to the Japanese Yen at a 1:1 ratio, available for sale in October 2019.

XRP
Ripple Reaches One-Month Highest Price

Ripple (XRP), the third largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has reached its highest price in the past 30 days. According to CoinMarketCap, XRP is currently trading at $0.53 with a market cap of $22 billion. This appears to be due to their partnership with the international remittance platform SendFriend, which has cut the cost of transactions across borders by up to 65% by adopting Ripple’s xRapid blockchain technology.

REPORT
Half of Healthcare Company Exploring Blockchain

Research from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) research shows that 49% of companies within the healthcare industry are working on blockchain projects, using it as a viable tool for data sharing and improving infrastructure and services. PwC says the benefits include cutting costs and increasing efficiencies.

ADOPTION
U.S.A Gets Closer to Crypto Adoption With Election of 2 Pro-Crypto Candidates

The historically progressive states of California and Colorado have just elected two pro-cryptocurrency candidates in America’s midterm elections. California’s Gavin Newsom, reportedly has the Winklevoss twins as campaign donors. Meanwhile, Colorado Democrat Jared Polis accepted crypto for donations and dedicated an entire page on his campaign website to Blockchain Policy. Both have made promises to establish “regulatory sandboxes” in order to promote blockchain growth in their respective states.

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