The majority of the top 100 cryptocurrencies have remained in the green this week – a handful of which are in double digits, a refreshing change from the past few months.
At press time, Bitcoin (BTC) is up 10.35% on the week, Ethereum (ETH) 9%, XRP (the native currency of the Ripple network) 5%, and Bitcoin Cash (BTC) 11%.
With total market capitalization rising nearly US$10B over the past 24 hours, this is the highest level since the ‘Bitcoin Boom’ at the beginning of April.
BTC’s total value has also broken past the US$100B boundary for the first time since November 2018, when the Bitcoin Cash fork caused a market-wide downturn.
Although the market as a whole is up, Bitcoin appears to be the main driver behind the recent rally. BTC dominance – the share of the market cap made up by Bitcoin – is now at 55%, the highest level of the year.
The total value of the crypto market currently sits just above $185B. If the present trend continues, it will be on course to hit the highest level for 2019.
CLICK BELOW FOR LIVE CRYPTOCURRENCY PRICE INDEXES:
Facebook Going Crypto?
Earlier today, the Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook is currently “recruiting dozens of financial firms and online merchants to help launch a cryptocurrency-based payments system.” This is a part of a blockchain initiative Facebook’s team internally calls “Project Libra”. And with it, Facebook is expected to create a stablecoin supported by fiat currency. With 2.38 billion monthly active users in the first quarter of 2019, Facebook is poised to make some major waves in crypto and general finance. “Payments and commerce are Facebook’s only way out from its freemium, advertisement business model,” commented Henry Liu, a former Facebook employee and managing partner of an enterprise blockchain investment firm called YGC.
Crypto Payment Pilot Project: Canada and Singapore Central Banks Send Each Other Digital Currencies
A senior official from Singapore’s de facto central bank said it cannot find potential in payment network Ripple in comments during a conference panel on May 2.
Speaking at MIT’s 2019 Business of Blockchain event, Sopnendu Mohanty, chief fintech officer at the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), discussed the city state’s pro-blockchain stance and the progress it’s making implementing the technology at a national level.
Mohanty was commenting on the back of a cross-border payment trial that MAS conducted with the Bank of Canada earlier this week. Formed by linking up the two states’ Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) networks – Project Ubin and Project Jasper – the funds transfer marked the first-ever such payment between two central banks.
At the same time, Ripple has sought to gain banking sector interest in its products, which utilize the XRP token to provide borderless payments. Ripple had been in talks with MAS about potential use cases for its technology since early 2018.
And finally, Cryptocurrency took center stage at the annual Fintech Symposium earlier this week. Forbes was there.
