During a crisis, the first thing panic-stricken investors do is to sell almost every asset class they perceive is likely to go down. However, after the panic settles down, the bottom fishers step in and start buying the assets that show value. We have seen both of these phases play out for cryptocurrencies. The sharp selloff on March 12 was a good example of panic and the sharp correction was quickly followed by a phase of cherry-picking by long-term investors. Since bottoming out on March 13, most major cryptocurrencies have rebounded and continue to press higher. After the selling ends, …

A new blockchain course offered by the Australian National University (ANU)’s law school commenced this year with support from Ripple’s University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI). Cointelegraph spoke to Lauren Weymouth, the senior manager of the UBRI’s University Partnerships Program, and Scott Chamberlain, the academic running the curriculum, to find out more about how blockchain can disrupt the legal industry and the partnership between the ANU and UBRI. Chamberlain will be working alongside the developer behind the Toast XRPL Wallet, Richard Holland, to develop and deliver the course. ANU law school launches blockchain course Chamberlain states that the first unit will …

Qualified digital asset custodian, Anchorage Trust Company, has added XRP to the list of assets supported by its institutional custody solution. The company announced support for the third largest cryptocurrency by market cap in a blog post on April 2. Anchorage claims that its custodial solution is safer than cold storage, while allowing the benefits of asset usability, offering features such as staking, airdrops, and even trading from custody. Xpring resources provide reliable solution According to Diogo Mónica, Anchorage co-founder and President, XRP support relies on resources including those developed and maintained by Ripple’s developer platform, Xpring. This most notably …

On April 2 the U.S. Labor Department reported that the U.S. weekly jobless claims skyrocketed to 6.6 million. In the previous week, the claims stood at 3.3 million, meaning over the past two weeks the number of laid off American workers seeking unemployment benefits has reached 10 million. If the numbers continue to grow, the government and Federal Reserve is likely to announce another round of stimulus measures. All the money printing is likely to erode the value of the US dollar. In such a case, the investors will search for assets that can protect their buying power and add …

Ripple co-founder and executive chairman Chris Larsen has made a full recovery from COVID-19. In a tweet on April 2, he thanked those working on the frontline against the virus, and also called for recovered patients to donate blood for use in antibody transplants. Larsen had not publicly shared the fact that he had been diagnosed with COVID-19. The majority of the crypto-community only discovered the truth when he posted his tweet, accompanied by a picture of himself wearing a facemask giving a thumbs-up gesture. Recovered patients can still help the sick Despite his recent recovery from the illness, Larsen …

Nik Bougalis, a cryptographer, software engineer and lead of the C++ team at Ripple, has published a proposed method for enhancing the privacy of transactions on the XRP ledger. In his Github post on March 30, Bougalis focused on the destination tags that are assigned to transactions made between wallets provided by exchanges or third-party providers — also known as hosted wallets. Bougalis argued that these destination tags present a potential privacy risk for users, which could be overcome through his proposed system of “blinded tags.” Blinded Tags Any transaction made between hosted wallets on the XRP ledger involves two …

The Dow Jones Industrial Average had its worst first quarter on record. Compared to that, Bitcoin only fell about 10% over the same period, which shows clear outperformance. The resilience of Bitcoin (BTC) in the current crisis shows that it has arrived on the big scene and that it can weather a storm better than some of the traditional asset classes. This is likely to attract several institutional players to Bitcoin. Now, what can we hope for during the second quarter? Bitcoin has a very important halving event coming up next month. This has been positive for the price action …

An amendment to the class-action lawsuit against Ripple, filed March 25, included additional claims of false advertising and unfair competition, “under the alternative theory that XRP is not a security.” The disgruntled investors’ sixth and seventh claims for relief would appear to be a direct hedge in the event that the judge rules against the original suit suggesting that XRP was illegally sold as an unregistered security. Hedging their bets The filing included two additional claims for relief, in relation to alleged false advertising and unfair competition, both in violation of the California Business and Professions Code. These additional claims …

The Australian National University (ANU)’s law school will roll out two new courses in its Masters program this year exploring the impact of blockchain on the legal field. The courses are being developed with the assistance of Ripple’s Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI) — a program that seeks to collaborate with universities to examine emerging trends and developments in distributed ledger technology, cryptocurrency and digital payments. ANU is offering courses examining the intersection between blockchain and law, as do a number of other Australian universities. The University of Melbourne and The University of Southern Queensland offer courses explicitly concerned with DLT …

BitMEX Research recently pointed out that the correlation between the S&P 500 and Bitcoin (BTC) has reached a new high, eclipsing the previous high recorded in March 2018. This shows that with all the money being printed to support the economy, a tiny bit might be finding its way into the crypto space, which is a huge positive. Over the long-term, only a fraction of the total stimulus packages announced around the world are enough to boost the crypto market capitalization. While many are bullish in the long-term, several investors want to catch the bottom. Earlier in the year veteran …

Major Spanish bank Santander plans to roll out its Ripple-powered international payments system One Pay FX in Mexico in 2020. In a Form 20-F filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission on March 6, the bank revealed that Mexico will be offering the service in early 2020. The One Pay FX system Based on Ripple’s RippleNet technology, One Pay FX is independent from XRP and does not need the digital currency to function, as a Santander spokesperson previously outlined to Cointelegraph. In its Form 20-F filing — an annual report that must be submitted to the SEC by …

Fake Google Chrome extensions for crypto hardware wallet manufacturer and custody provider, Ledger, continue to claim victims. On March 28, a post was published to Reddit by a user seeking to warn others that they had just lost 14,908 Ripple (XRP) (roughly $2,577) to a fake Ledger Wallet extension on the Google Chrome store. According to the poster, ‘leannekera’, the lost funds comprised a nest egg that she and her husband had been growing since 2017. The wallet that her XRP was sent to quickly forwarded her funds to a second wallet that currently holds nearly 15 million in XRP. …