Oil Price Crashes Down, Ripple vs. YouTube, Digital Euro on the Rise While a Blockchain App Helps Keeping People at Home
In this edition:
- Oil Price Goes Below Zero; BTC Price Steady
- Ripple Sues YouTube
- Dutch Central Bank to Lead With Digital Euro
- Blockchain App Encourages You to Stay at Home
News in the world of crypto is booming once again, fellow Anchorians! This time, it wasn’t easy to pick this week’s highlights for you, guys, since the industry is rapidly going back on track. Hear, hear! COVID-19 pandemic has taken weeks of our lives, making us tremble and wait for the storm to pass. Though the fight isn’t over yet, many individuals, businesses, organizations, and governments decided to take the lead and do something useful despite the current situation.
The cryptocurrency industry witnessed many interesting occurrences in the past week, while blockchain continued to expand its long list of real-world use cases. Central banks are still very keen on developing national digital currencies and Earthlings are ready to look to the future again. With the positive, comes the negative – in this case it was a shocking dip in the American crude oil price but let’s not give away the spoilers now! Come on board, the newest edition of Weekly Crypto Roundup is ready for you!
Oil Price Goes Below Zero; BTC Price Steady
This week was marked by a historic event – the US crude oil price went below zero for the first time ever before it bounced back to $1 per barrel on Tuesday.
Monday was a gloomy day in the American oil industry. Due to the lack of storage space in the events of the coronavirus pandemic, producers caused a never-seen-before crash with oversupply. No, it’s not a doomsday movie – the price of the US crude went from $18 a barrel to -$38 in just a few hours.
- Good evening, I’m here to buy a barrel of crude oil, please give me my $38.
Sounds impossible but that’s exactly what happened since the producers needed to get rid of the barrels they couldn’t store; by paying customers to have it. It’s only logical, when you think about it – no air traffic, big cargo ships, etc. Low demand, high supply… Do the math yourself.
Now, we are not oil experts but we can reflect on one thing that indeed interests us – did this occurrence have any effect on the BTC and crypto market in general? We all know that bitcoin is not immune to the important events around the globe, but this one seems to have no negative influence whatsoever! In fact, crude oil misfortune turned out to be good for the BTC purchasing power.
At the moment of writing, one BTC is worth $7,088 which is $200 more than the price at the beginning of the week. While historic, crude oil sub-zero crash had no negative consequences on the world of crypto. Rest easy, hodlers, this event won’t make you see the red this time!
Ripple Sues YouTube
Ripple Labs and its CEO Brad Garlinghouse decided to sue the streaming giant, YouTube. The reason behind this lawsuit is a poor reaction from YouTube regarding the fake XRP giveaway scams which led to monetary and reputational damage to the company.
Though these XRP giveaway scams were present on other social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram, Ripple’s CEO saw YouTube as the main culprit for their distribution.
‘’Across the industry, social media companies have failed to police their platforms from being abused by the entirely preventable imposter giveaway scams. Hundreds of people (including some of you) have been hurt, yet big tech continues to drag their feet’’, Garlinghouse said.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars were unlawfully acquired by the scammers, according to the lawsuit, and Ripple felt the need to protect its name and customers by suing parties seen as accountable. Even after 25 takedown notices from Ripple, YouTube allegedly failed to react timely and this lack of promptness was the main reason for suing.
The lawsuit is seen as the last resort in protecting the brand and Ripple’s management hopes that this case will raise awareness of present scams and make social media platforms more responsive.
Unfortunately, the crypto industry is often marked as ‘scammy’, and people outside the community are still wary of cryptocurrency projects even though there are many serious and successful companies within the industry. Sometimes, one simple ‘rule’ is being forgotten – everyone’s priority should be user protection, being a crypto platform, or not.
Dutch Central Bank to Lead With Digital Euro
The Dutch Central Bank (DNB) is ready to be the EU’s CBDC testing ground! The Netherlands prepared a 45-page pitch stating the land of tulips is the right place for digital euro testing.
The DNB said they would be thrilled to ‘play a leading role’ in creating the official European digital currency and they are committed to conduct research and develop technical solutions to make it happen. Naturally, Facebook’s Libra was mentioned once again as a ‘serious threat’ to the Union’s monetary policy, and as a cause of central banks’ recently emerged will to develop their own digital currencies.
Why the Netherlands? Well, for starters, people there are used to not paying in cash. Year by year, there are fewer ATMs across the country and fewer cash withdrawals.
The idea is to additionally decrease the usage of paper money and to move all transactions to the digital world. In this unavoidable digitization, central banks see themselves as the only legitimate party to develop digital currencies. The Dutch want to be proactive because of the potential damage to national economies if private companies introduce digital means of payment first.
Additionally, DNB says that full decentralization, in terms of distributed ledger technology, was not possible in their case: ‘’The fully decentralized solution of, for example, bitcoin, with decentralized validation, was partly ideologically driven. It seems unnecessary for CBDC to make those sacrifices.’’
Since the European Union is, well, a union, the solution for digitization of its currency, euro, can’t be made without an agreement of other members. Not every country within the EU uses the euro as an official currency, but the decision regarding digital euro has to be made by all parties concerned.
Clearly, this is only the beginning of the story but we will surely keep you posted!
Blockchain App Encourages You to Stay at Home
Orbs, a blockchain startup from Israel launched a new app to encourage people to stay at home during the pandemic. This is not the first case of crypto or blockchain companies to help in fighting COVID-19, but it certainly is an extraordinary one.
The app is called ‘Stay at Home Challenge’ and it works on a slightly unconventional basis. Essentially, your app will ensure you don’t leave your house by giving a warning every time you leave your house premises.
The most interesting part is gamification – you are able to share your progress with friends and family and encourage them as well to stay at home. May the most responsible citizen win! Orbs claims this app only collects data regarding your movement and location, not names, emails or any other personal information.
It’s a small contribution to the world but it can most definitely help, especially if you are the competitive type!
At the moment, the Stay at Home Challenge app is available for download on Google Play and it will soon be available to iOS users, too. I know I would be the absolute best among my friends and family, what about you?
Final Thoughts
CBDCs, blockchain-based apps, crude oil, lawsuits… This indeed was an interesting week in the world of crypto! As I said, this multitude of events can only mean one thing – we are ready to begin anew. May is just around the corner, as well as the BTC halving, and we are all very excited to see what happens next.
Your Weekly Crypto Roundup will not disappoint you in weeks to come – we’ll always break down the most important news for you because you deserve to know it! Until next week, I wish you fair winds and the following seas, my fellow Anchorians!
Disclaimer: The information provided in this post is not legal, accounting, or financial advice. I am not a lawyer, accountant, or financial advisor. I am not registered as an investment adviser with any federal or state regulatory agency. The Information should not be construed as investment or trading advice and is not meant to be a solicitation or recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any cryptocurrencies.
