New records of cryptocurrencies and the fall of Ripple – weekly digest

The price of bitcoin for the fourth time in December updated its absolute maximum – on December 25, a record high of $ 24,500 was reached. Altcoins also revived a little.

The number of whale wallets with a balance of $10 million hit a new high of 4,500, while the number of wallets with a balance of $1,000 or more in bitcoin rose to 4.57 million.

An interesting fact: the growth of bitcoin from March to December 2017 amounted to 2,000%, and in 2020 for the same period – 500%.

Adding to the optimism is the fact that this week the Grayscale cryptocurrency funds raised $500 million per day, and the NASDAQ fintech company Mogo plans to invest up to $1.5 million in bitcoins.

The total volume of transactions in stablecoins has reached a new high – in 2020, the figure exceeded the $1 trillion mark. The most interesting thing is that last year the volume was as much as 3.22 times lower: $248 billion. That is, the demand for moving in stables has increased significantly. The leader among them traditionally remains Tether (73%).

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said that the US SEC is preparing a lawsuit against them for the illegal sale of securities under the guise of XRP tokens. Brad is sure that this is an attempt to attack the crypto industry and limit it to only Bitcoin and Ethereum. The head of Ripple also believes that the outgoing Trump government wants to put as much pressure on the industry as possible, and with the advent of Biden, the attitude towards cryptocurrencies will be more loyal.

In less than a day, it became known that the SEC filed a lawsuit against Ripple. The regulator says the company has raised $1.3 billion over seven years, including $600 million raised by Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen, who will be defendants in the lawsuit. Also, the lawsuit documents indicate that Ripple paid its customers large amounts of payment systems for providing volumes, among them the MoneyGram transfer service. The following is a quote from CTO David Schwartz:

«Ripple’s public strategy has been to do whatever is necessary to maximize the price of XRP over a period that allows us to sell what we have».

After that, during the day, XRP fell significantly – $0.470 (-11.09%).

MoneyGram has not yet responded to the lawsuit and has taken a wait-and-see attitude in cooperation with Ripple. But several companies have suspended trading of the XRP token. The XRP token was excluded from the cryptocurrency index of the Bitwise Asset Management management company. This decision was made after the information about the lawsuit against Ripple. As a result, the XRP rate fell by 35% per day ($ 0.31). Galaxy Digital cryptocurrency bank and Jump Trading company have also suspended cooperation.

Lawyers assume that the fintech company will lose the court to the regulator and pay a large fine, and similar lawsuits may continue with other altcoins. The consideration of the claim may take years and will become more difficult than in the case of EOS or Kin, because the company is registered in the United States, continues to sell tokens after they are recognized as securities, and the sales themselves are centralized.

On December 25, Bitstamp exchange announced that it will stop listing XRP for US users from January 8. The price of the token recovered by 40% after the liquidation of short positions, but against the background of this news it fell from $0.38 to $0.29 in two hours.

The Association of Italian Banks (including 700 institutions) has started testing the digital euro. Experiments are conducted in order to identify how possible it is to implement the idea of a digital euro technically, as well as to create new profitable services using programmable technology. Therefore, testing will be carried out in two relevant directions.

Wirex fintech company has become a full member of Visa (Visa Principal Member). The British processing service will be able to issue Visa cards independently and will receive other benefits that will help the mass adoption of cryptocurrencies. In addition to Wirex, only one company has such a status – Coinbase.

Central Bank of Russia: the appearance of the digital ruble will help citizens to escape from "payment slavery". According to the regulator, the state digital currency will reduce the cost of payment transactions and help create new services based on smart contracts. In addition, the state will be able to control the targeted spending of funds allocated for the implementation of national programs and projects, and users can create restrictions for spending money from electronic wallets. For example, it will be impossible to buy alcohol from the wallets of minors.

Ledger will not pay compensation to the victims of the recent data leak. Previously, customers of a well-known hardware wallet received ransom letters in which attackers operated with real data of residential addresses. The company's CEO Pascal Gauthier then urged users not to pay attention to threats. Now the company's representatives refuse to compensate for the damage and replace the devices, because this could ruin the company, instead they are going to invest in the security level of their product.

“In fact, coming to someone's house is a very expensive pleasure,” the company says and recommends contacting law enforcement in case of real danger.

Twitter users reacted with humor to such statements and offered to protect private keys "with the help of hardware."

Christopher Wood, chief strategist at investment firm Jefferies, will cut gold positions for pension funds and replace them with bitcoin. The percentage of gold in the portfolio (50%) will be reduced by 5%. The asset allocation will now look like this:

• physical gold bullion – 45%
• unhedged shares of gold mining companies – 30%
• Asian stocks excluding Japan, weighted according to the thematic portfolio for long positions only – 20%
• bitcoin – 5%.