FinHawk

Time is the most valuable resource in the universe. Despite the testing times in 2020, despite every setback and loss, we're coming back on track much stronger, with all the invaluable lessons that this time has given us. It has been a great year for cryptocurrencies, not in the least for the king, Bitcoin. Bitcoin has grown more than 300% in 2020 alone. The philosophical questions around what constitutes a currency, and whether it can be considered an investment linger on, and so do legal questions around it as in the case of XRP , but for a lot of people it has been a valuable asset to own.  Key drivers have been an established institutional interest as well as a baseline retail base that refuses to go away. We're currently seeing developments not just in the crypto investment and trading universe but also the wider DeFi ecosystem being built around cryptocurrencies and blockchain. Derivatives are now commonplace, and so are lending and payments. We're also seeing new and...

Brief on Ripple and XRP Ripple is a company that enables cross border payments and remittances. RippleNet is a payments network they provide which is based on blockchain. A much highlighted and valuable feature is on demand liquidity.  Large banks would traditionally rely on, what are called, nostro accounts to hold foreign currencies as this helps mitigate currency price fluctuations during international transactions. Smaller banks typically depend on larger banks to provide them with this liquidity in lieu of high fees, which are eventually borne by the end customer. Ripple's XRapid is designed specifically for the smaller and medium sized banks and uses XRP as, what is called, a bridge currency. This can help reduce between 40-70% transaction costs, and also massively decreases the time per transaction from days to seconds. Another Ripple product, though not tied to XRP, is xCurrent, which provides a systems that is secure and reliable. It offers out of the box interoperability...