Some digital assets have been given a pass, known in the crypto world as the “Ethereum free pass.” Other digital assets, XRP for instance, have had their entire market disrupted due to a lawsuit that the SEC brought against the “minting” company, Ripple.

Ripple minted a total supply of 100 billion XRP in a project they started over a decade ago. Jed McCaleb broke off from Ripple and started Stellar. Stellar produced the digital token known as XLM.

The comparability of XRP and XLM in terms of their functionality for providing real life solutions to real life problems is well known. They provide on demand liquidity for financial markets around the globe. That’s a big deal.

Why then, would the United States government file a lawsuit against one of these two companies alleging the sale of unregistered securities years after the sale of the the digital token began? We know that Ripple sought guidance from the SEC then, yet none was provided.

This lawsuit began with Jay Clayton, a President Trump appointee and continues to this day with Gary Gensler, a Biden appointee. This lawsuit is bigger than politics. It is about money. Global amounts of money.

– Rand

All opinions are my own and should not be considered investment advice. I am doing this to provide entertainment.

#sec #ripple #stellar #crypto #digitalasset #ethereum #bitcoin

Digital assets may become the new safe haven when it comes to sheltering investments during economic downturns. We know that gold has always been classified as a good bet and that bitcoin is dubbed “digital gold.”

The digital asset bitcoin has been around since 2008, just after the onset of the last major recession. This has given it the benefit of coming out in front as the most popular asset in the class. However, it does not mean that it is the only asset in this space, or that it will remain the front runner.

There are many more digital assets that have sustainable business use cases, transforming the way that the world operates. Ethereum is one such digital asset that is recently threatening the status of bitcoin, especially when is comes to being sustainable.

In times of crisis, like that which we are all experiencing now, new systems take hold that reshape society’s idea of normal. The bigger the crisis, the bigger the change. When was the last time economies shut down entire sectors of the business community? The changes that erupt from this pandemic will be massive and it seems that digital assets may have a place in the aftermath. Just listen for the words “liquidity” and “crisis” from the mouths of nation’s leaders. There are options available in the digital asset sphere that can substantially help mitigate such instances.

– Rand

All opinions are my own and should not be considered investment advice. I am doing this to provide entertainment.

That’s right everyone. The dots for connecting digital assets with real world use cases are growing in number. It reminds me of when as a child, I would connect dots on paper to get a final picture. Sometimes the dots were so few that you could not really visualize what the image would be, but there were also those pictures with so many dots, you could immediately see what was going to present itself.

The picture has been adding dots and a perfect example is the DTCC partnering with a multitude of tech firms in the distributed ledger technology (DLT) and digital asset sphere.

Look around at the mainstream traction that digital assets have been gaining. Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple just had an interview on CNN explaining the way their native cryptocurrency XRP functions in the banking world. Watch the interview here.

It is highly likely that the digital asset world will shed many of the participants in the coming months as regulators begin determining how best to allow these technologies to function parallel to the existing currency frameworks of global economies.

France, along with other governments, fear the affect of projects such as Facebook’s Libra. Ultimately, national governments are concerned of the threat to their monetary sovereignty with the creation of digital currencies that are designed to compete with, replace, or even coexist with the fiat of the nation. BBC has an article of interest to explain their stance on the Facebook Libra project.

Best,

Rand

Words and opinions are my own. This is for entertainment purposes and to share my own opinions. This is not financial advice.

#digitalasset #cryptocurrency #digitalfuture #ripple #monetarysovreignty #futureofmoney

Blockchain is undoubtedly a topic worth knowing about. With a seemingly endless number of use cases, it is always good practice to understand where a technology can be applied in a specific use. By narrowing our focus and applying any number of proposed blockchain use cases to an industry, we can begin to imagine how this technology can be used to create certain enhancements and reforms.

Let’s start with the smart contract and the construction industry. Specifically, we will look at where the technology of a smart contract stops and how it can be reinforced to adapt to more fluid transaction environments that do not, or even should not, always follow the same transaction methodology.

It is important to note that a smart contract is not a contract in and of itself, but rather an automated system on the blockchain that performs unalterable functions to execute an agreement. In essence, it forces the agreement to function.

The construction industry has a number of moving parts that impact the bottom line for all parties involved. There are owners, GC’s (general contractors), engineering firms, inspectors, sub-contractors, insurance companies, public agencies, and communities involved in the process. Many, or all, are often external stakeholders to one another. The number of participants and individual interests in a large scale private or public project can often lead to deflection of risk, miscommunication, and substantial extra cost.

As an aside to the focus of this article on blockchain, I recommend reading UK Construction Industry estimates loss of up to £13 billion in construction projects due to poor communication between parties, written by Susan Pettit, Director of Client Management at UK research firm, Client Confident. The article focuses on the cost of miscommunication (as the title suggests).

How might blockchain begin to mitigate and streamline the construction process? A developer or project owner wants to build a project and mitigate all risk, but should the risk associated with the project owner’s ambitions be pushed down the line on smaller and smaller companies? The legal issues, time, and expenses that may come as result of a contract disagreement can cost a small company its existence.

Smart contracts extend the idea of maximizing fair play throughout a project life-cycle. In the current language of many Prime Contracts, any subcontractor can become involved with any number of claims during and after their time on the job. This can range from labor disputes, delay of job clauses, and retainage of payment for issues that arise outside the scope of the subcontractor’s control costing time, legal fees, and productivity. The contract language is written specifically enough to make you a party, but vaguely enough in defining parameters, keeping the specifics of why a clause may be enacted undefined. This may adversely affects a subcontractor that has otherwise performed their work accordingly. Essentially, the contract world is not as fair as it could be.

If industry standards can be formalized, while simultaneously accounting for variables in the process, owners of large and complex projects can issue RFPs to the open market under a standardized smart contract for the particular subcontractor skills or vendors to bid on. Terms are predefined based on necessity of the outcomes and favor both the owner and bidding party accounting for each organization’s needs and understanding of potential variables.

A subcontractor, unless otherwise involved in the construction process, should have access to a contract or agreement that fairly represents their scope of work within the entire project.

The rules written in the smart contract may not contain all possible scenarios that a transaction, or series of transactions may encounter. It is likely that a smart contract be in addition to the actual agreement, more of a system to speed up and execute aspects of the agreement in a timely and trusted manner.

The construction industry is an excellent example of transactional volatility due to the multi-layered construction process in a single project. As mentioned before, there are potential variables with every hired contractor and subcontractor that cannot be taken into account when designing a blanket contract. In this scenario, we would employ off-chain logic that uses third party validation for the variable scenarios that arise outside of the standard permissioned smart contract language (IBM Developer, Desrosiers and Olivieri, 2018). IBM Operational Decision Manager (ODM) is a third party system that engages answers from each party involved in the transaction, specifically applying a determination based on answers provided by the parties involved in the transaction.

The technology and applications for increasing business intelligence, openness, and accountability are quite remarkable. How far can technology propel integrity and omission of human error in enterprise, free market or otherwise? Will smart contracts become legally binding in the court of law?

Best,

Rand

NOTE: As the domain name of this site suggests, the content my blog posts are opinion and not investment advice of any kind. Do your own research before making any decisions to invest (or not to invest). I am not a financial advisor. I am simply sharing information I gather from across the web, news, and media outlets and drawing my own possible conclusions. 

XLM, Stellar Lumens and IBM:
According to the Stellar website, there have been 8,143,934,276 Lumens (XLM) distributed at the time of writing this article. You say, “great, what the does that mean for me?”

The principal behind the Stellar network, and the XLM token in particular, is to move money across borders for a fraction of a penny. It costs institutions money to move money. Whether it is USD to GBP, or CDN to YEN, there is a cost to facilitate the exchange of one currency to another.
This is where tokens such as XLM step in. They act as a “bridge currency” to the underlying fiat currencies. Through the Stellar network, the transfer of USD to GBP goes through XLM. USD is first converted to XLM, then converted to GBP in a matter of seconds and at a mere fraction of the current cost to traditional exchange rates.
The Stellar network is decentralized, meaning that it is not controlled by a single entity. The settlement time using XLM is 2 – 5 seconds. Money has not transferred that quickly, ever. There are similar coins in the Stellar Lumens space, specifically, XRP. Both are worth looking at due to their current low cost of ownership and the use case that each provide. XLM is focused on a direct peer-to-peer system that cuts banks and XRP out of the equation. It could be argued that each will have a place in the money transfer sphere as the banking system has a long history of being involved in the economies of the world.
Partnerships that Steller has developed:
IBM, Stripe, Wipro, Deloitte, and Mifos to name a few. The full list can be found on Stellar.org.
Yes, Stellar is a .org as they are a non-profit organization.
You can purchase XLM on a variety of exchanges.

Best,

Rand

DISCLAIMER: As the domain name of this site suggests, the content of my blog posts are opinion and not investment advice of any kind. Do your own research before making any decisions to invest (or not to invest). I am not a financial advisor. I am simply sharing information I gather from across the web, news, and media outlets and drawing my own possible conclusions. I hold XRP and XLM.