Crypto investors are an interesting lot.

I like seeing the frenetic postings of short-term traders that frequent chat rooms, Reddit, and Twitter. I don’t take joy in seeing the stress of the short-term or day traders, but for me it’s a positive signal of the next phase of crypto going mainstream.

People make a living at this!

Similar to the evolution of day trading over the internet seventeen years ago, crypto is now becoming more accessible to “normal” people, not just people with a technical or cryptography background. It wasn’t always this way. In 2013 when I started taking Bitcoin seriously, it was even more of a wild west than it is now, if that’s possible! I still remember being very impressed by anybody that could understand how these cryptographic networks validated transactions without trust, and still have it on my own personal to-do list to read through Bitcoin Core at some point. 1

Now former day traders can trade crypto-currencies without a technical background.

And that’s exciting to see; money is pouring into the crypto industry at an alarming rate, and the market capitalization of all crypto-coins combined is steadily increasing to new highs each month, and as of August 13, 2017 was $135 billion. 2 Most analysts predict that this trend will continue beyond an industry market capitalization of 1 trillion,3 with one respected analyst estimating a plateau of 5 trillion! 4

Colossal growth will bring traders looking to cash in on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Where will they place their bets after doing research? An Initial Coin Offering (ICO) where they believe they can “get in” at the right time and then “out” at a higher point? Short-term and day traders are not typically interested in an ICO for the underlying offering’s technical capabilities. They’re not investors. They are speculators who are far more attracted to the profit potential of trading coins rather than a coin’s utility or business model.

Parallels from the Dot-com Boom

Miguel Vias is a sought-after commentator on the industry by news organizations, and he is also Ripple’s head of XRP Markets. In a recent article from Reuters, he commented on the myriad of new crypto-coins and protocols:

“Will some of these (currencies) go away? Of course,” said Vias of Ripple. “We’re going to see Darwinism in real-time here. Only the strong will survive.”

Like the Dot-com boom, the companies with distinct offerings and solid use cases, as well as the proper mix of business acumen and astute leadership, will survive the turbulent chaos that comes with rapid growth and the potential opportunities that an entire new industry creates. Think Amazon. Think Google. And now in the midst of the crypto boom, think Ripple.

Ripple is Expanding and Standardizing its Offerings

As banks and financial institutions are adopting Ripple technology and XRP, Ripple has embarked on an effort to standardize and package its technology in easy-to-understand-and-explain groups. 5 6 7

xCurrent is Ripple’s enterprise software solution that enables banks to instantly settle cross-border payments with end-to-end tracking. Using xCurrent, banks message each other in real-time to confirm payment details prior to initiating the transaction and to confirm delivery once it settles. xRapid is for payment providers and other financial institutions who want to minimize liquidity costs while improving their customer experience. Because payments into emerging markets often require pre-funded local currency accounts around the world, liquidity costs are high. xRapid dramatically lowers the capital requirements for liquidity. xVia is for corporates, payment providers and banks who want to send payments across various networks using a standard interface. xVia’s simple API requires no software installation and enables users to seamlessly send payments globally with transparency into the payment status and with rich information, like invoices, attached.

Each one of these three software packages establishes a potential usage for XRP, the native no-counter-party-risk currency of the XRP Ledger.

Expansion takes resources and time, and Ripple proved that they have the “follow-through” to establish a market presence overseas on the Pacific rim with a massive bank consortium based in Japan that covers banks holding upwards of 80% of all assets in that country’s banks. 8

What’s next? China.

Chris Larsen – Executive Chairman – signaled Ripple’s intention to enter the Chinese market with his appointment on the Technology Advisory Board of HSBC, the largest bank in Hong Kong. 9 10

And in a tweet recently, Emi Yoshikawa from Ripple tweeted that they are hiring the team members that will form the core presence in China for Ripple. 11

The Chinese market has the potential to dwarf even the massive bank adoption Ripple has achieved thus far in Japan and South Korea. One article recently claimed that AliPay and WeChat processed over $3 trillion in payments in 2016. 12 13 With a population of 1.4 billion and counting, capturing any part of the Chinese cross-border value transfer business would be a significant addition to Ripple’s market reach.

RippleNet is Beginning to Connect All Banks Together

With over 90 banks and financial institution customers, and over 75 commercial deployments, RippleNet is gaining traction that is now poised to challenge the legacy bank technology underpinning global transfers of value. 14

When RippleNet triggers a tidal wave of global economic transformation, will you already be an XRP owner?

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