Replies to post #280 on Stellar Lumens (XLMUSD)

[Molonlabe461]

Great post, let’s hope more and more other institutions start following suit! Thanks

[Investors3]

Stellar’s Jed McCaleb Says His XRP Sell-Off Won’t Disrupt Crypto Market
By Rachel Wolfson FEB 19, 2020

https://cointelegraph.com/news/stellars-jed-mccaleb-says-his-xrp-sell-off-wont-disrupt-crypto-market

A recent Medium post from blockchain monitor Whale Alert showed that Stellar CTO Jed McCaleb sold off more than 1 billion XRP between 2014 and 2019. The post attempted to analyze whether or not McCaleb’s sale of XRP will affect the price of the crypto. Whale Alert noted that compared with other total trade volumes per day, the amount McCaleb is selling seems insignificant.

Following up on this, McCaleb told Cointelegraph in an interview that it’s strange that so many people are focused on his recent trading of XRP, noting that others have sold much more in comparison. He said:

“I have been transparent from the beginning. The market has known for years that I have been selling my XRP at a slow, steady rate. My investment decisions are not based on any desire to negatively impact other companies in this industry. I think the history to date shows there is no impact on the market, and I don’t see any reason why that will change.”

McCaleb, who served as the co-founder of Ripple until 2013 and is now the CTO of Stellar (XLM), also responded to assumptions that he was dumping XRP to hurt Ripple. McCaleb mentioned that he doesn’t view different blockchain networks to be in competition with one another. He explained:

“We’re all working towards making blockchain a viable, transformative industry. I think we can do that more effectively if we’re supportive of others in the space. For my part, I’m focused on growing the Stellar ecosystem."

Ripple comments on McCaleb’s seven-year agreement

On Aug. 14, 2014, Ripple wrote a post on a company forum explaining McCaleb’s settlement of his XRP earnings. The article details how XRP was distributed among Ripple’s original founders, noting that 20 billion XRP was divided among those individuals.

McCaleb stated that his intention was to sell his portion of XRP. In turn, Ripple Labs engaged with McCaleb to enter a seven-year contract that would ensure the responsible distribution of his XRP stake in a way that would help grow the Ripple ecosystem. A Ripple spokesperson told Cointelegraph:

“In 2016, we entered into a very structured agreement with Jed with the goal of ensuring distribution of his XRP holdings in service to a healthy, growing ecosystem without market disruption, with Ripple as custodian of Jed's XRP holdings. This agreement remains in place today. Much of this information is publicly available.”

Interestingly, while Ripple posted about the agreement on the company forum in August 2014, Ripple told Cointelegraph that this was replaced with an updated 2016 agreement. This means that McCaleb’s seven-year agreement with Ripple won’t end until 2023.

Whale Alert noted in its blog post that McCaleb’s agreement will expire this year (based on the 2014 blog post). Whale Alert also hypothesized that McCaleb’s XRP profits are being cashed out directly through Bitstamp. However, McCaleb told Cointelegprah that he is selling his XRP on Ripple’s internal exchange.

XRP’s price analyzed

While McCaleb claims that his recent selling of XRP has not impacted XRP’s market price, others beg to differ. Founder of Quantum Economics and senior market analyst at eToro, Mati Greenspan, told Cointelegraph that McCaleb’s XRP sales are likely a reason XRP has been underperforming lately. He said:

“Price is a simple matter of overall volumes on the buy-side versus overall volumes on the sell-side. So, more tokens sold definitely causes downward pressure on the price, especially when we're talking about large amounts.”

Although logistically this may be the case, an anonymous, well-informed source told Cointelegraph that McCaleb hasn’t been selling enough XRP to impact its price and that, overall, altcoins have been performing better than usual lately.

[Investors3]

Euro stablecoin launched on Stellar by one of Europe’s oldest banks
JOSHUA MAPPERSON
DEC 10, 2020

The EURB is fully regulated and backed 100% by Euros, allowing banks and institutional investors to use the cryptocurrency without exposure to counterparty risk.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/euro-stablecoin-launched-on-stellar-by-one-of-europe-s-oldest-banks

Germany’s Bankhaus von der Heydt, or BVDH, has launched a Euro stablecoin on the Stellar network.

The bank claims the token is the first of its kind to be issued by a banking institute.The EURB stablecoin, which went live today, was developed on the Stellar blockchain in partnership with tokenization and digital asset custody technology provider Bitbond.

The asset, which is fully regulated and backed one-for-one with Euros, will not be openly traded on exchanges due to tight regulatory and Know Your Customer requirements.

If a customer wants to acquire the stablecoin, a fiat currency transfer is held in an escrow account at the BVDH, which triggers the issuance of the EURB. The announcement states that developers of financial applications can immediately utilize the token to settle asset transfers on-chain. The underlying platform, built by Bitbond, gives full control of the stablecoin’s security to the bank, including mechanisms for burning and minting the token.

BVDH, which was established in 1754, has traditionally focused on institutional clients in securitization-related transactions. The choice to use Stellar and Bitbond (which have been working together since 2019) was made after almost a year of exploring distributed ledger technology. BVDH managing director Philipp Doppelhammer explained:

“We were drawn to Bitbond and Stellar due to the ease in which assets are issued and managed on the network.”

Doppelhammer stated that the EURB’s first use case will be for “cross-border money transfers” for blockchain payments company SatoshiPay’s business customers.

The lack of a fully licensed bank backing today’s stablecoins is their main shortfall, BVDH business development manager Lukas Weniger stated. Bitbond founder and CEO Radoslav Albrecht noted:

“Banks normally wouldn’t feel comfortable using [stablecoins] like Tether or USDC, due to the potential counterparty risk that is behind them [...] They prefer to work with stablecoins issued by banks, and the same is true for institutional investors.”

The German regulator Federal Financial Supervisory Authority has already provided their approval for Bitbond to issue tokenized bonds on Stellar.

Earlier this week, German private bank Hauck & Aufhäuser announced its first crypto fund, the HAIC Digital Asset Fund I, launching Jan. 1, 2021, which will include Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and Stellar’s XLM.