Like all other weeks in crypto, it has been a crazy one. In case you’ve missed, here’s a brief digest of some of the hottest stories we spotted this week on social and public media.

RaiBlocks to Be Listed on Binance

Last Friday, Binance finished the fifth round of “Community Coin per Month” and announced RaiBlocks (XRB) as the winner of January voting. The prize for the winner? That’s righ — free listing placement on Binance.

The exact time of XRB’s appearance on Binance is yet to be announced, but Reddit users estimate that it may take 7 to 10 days, as it happened with the previous-month winner, ETHLend (LEND).

To those unfamiliar with Binance, it was founded in mid-2017 and has quickly become one of the largest exchanges by trading volume (with more than 7M unique visitors per month, according to SimilarWeb). In fact, Binance is so successful, it had to temporary close registration on its platform.

Goes without saying that being listed on such an exchange is an important milestone for RaiBlocks that can skyrocket its value.

According to our measures, the news was warmly welcomed in social media and led to a very positive trend in XRB’s social volume and sentiment.

Source: solume.io

CoinMarketCap Decision Exludes South Korean Exchanges from Price Calculation Caused Market Decline

On Monday, CoinMarketCap announced through its twitter account that it had excluded three South Korean exchanges, namely Bithumb, Coinone, and Korbit, from its price calculations.

Such an unannounced move led to a major confusion, as CoinMarketCap reflected a significant marked decline as soon as calculation changes went into effect. This confusion caused holders to panic and sell their assets, which led to an actual price decline.

One of the coins that got affected most by CoinMarketCap’s decision was Ripple (XRP) which is sold in large volumes in South Korea. A CoinMarketCap chart shows a $20-billion market cap decline for the cryptocurrency within a 15-minute interval, which allowed Ethereum to overtake Ripple in the CoinMarketCap chart.

David Schwartz, Chief Cryptographer at Ripple, posted in his Twitter account:

Such a move without any warning caused a wave of outrage in the crypto community, accusing CoinMarketCap of market manipulation and even testing their influence on the crypto market. Following CoinMarketCap’s move, Live Coin Watch, another go-to crypto price index, will soon be adding an optional filter that excludes data from Korean exchanges from price averages as well.

CoinMarketCap’s decision generated a lot of buzz in social media. Ripple’s social volume at Solume.io reflected a significant growth (+130% as compared to the previous day):

For our newly acquainted readers, social volume is a measurement based on the quantity and quality of social media mention of the cryptocurrency. By choosing the day or a time period you can get familiar with all social media posts and discussions sorted by post timing or upvotes.

Ripple to Partner with MoneyGram

Another splash of social media buzz (+178% in Solume’s social volume) around Ripple was sparked by the recent announcement of the upcoming partnership between Ripple and MoneyGram.

Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghous tweeted that Moneygram will now use $XRP tokens in their payment flows.

MoneyGram is planning on using Ripple’s new xRapid service intended to provide transparent, fast and reliable money transfers to users, as well as liquidity to the company. As for Ripple, the company that recently faced questions about the XRP’s real-world purpose has a chance to demonstrate their ability to provide fast money transfers at a low cost.

The announcement of the strategic tie-up had an immediate impact on $XRP’s price which hit the $2 mark soon after the notice.

That’s it for today. Have a great weekend everyone.

Would be happy to hear your feedback on this digest.

Yours,

Polina