- Bitcoin remains in a stable range on Saturday trading at around USD 6,700
- The EU names blockchain technology as part of social services digitalization efforts
- Institutional crypto custodian Anchorage adds XRP support
Bitcoin prices have managed to stay steady in the past 24 hours. Although bulls could be slightly disappointed that late Friday’s touching of a USD 7,049 daily high (Chrome) could not last thanks to a slew of profit taking on orders from eager sellers, they will take a lot of heart that the day’s low of USD 6,612 was a higher low than the day before, and was even more temporary.
One big positive news for the weekend is that the European Union (EU) has now said that blockchain technology is part of its social services digitalization efforts to keep the economic zone abreast of modern times. In a 2020 report by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound), it wrote:
“As in the case of the services sector, the use of blockchain technology is in an early phase of adoption in health and social care, where it has been used to pay benefits in cash and to monitor pension contributions.”
Eurofound highlights the benefits of blockchain as well as its use cases, noting how the technology enables security while eliminating the reliance on third parties. It says that the technology allows public sectors to better serve citizens with more customized services while improving trust in governments by giving greater transparency. It points out how blockchain-based identification can also be utilized for funding and other cash benefits allocation in a cheaper and faster manner.
It then goes on to say that pensions and other payments could be made easier with blockchain, even though it is such a young technology:
“Even though blockchain is still in the early stages of adoption in the service sector, it may lead to the replacement of intermediaries, contracts and/or verification systems.”
Basically, the EU intends to go digital and names many areas for digitalization such as robotics, artificial intelligence and Internet of Things technology, with the main objectives all being to help social services achieve cost efficiency and so that retirees are able to live independently in their own homes for much longer than currently.
It said that many people had researched the subject and contributed to the report, long before the Covid-19 pandemic, but then it had managed to add in relevant topics to the unfolding situation.
Meanwhile, a big corporate crypto entity has bullish news coming up. This time, the Anchorage Trust Company announced the addition of Ripple (XRP) token to its list of supported assets. The institutional custody solution for crypto said that this support for XRP — the third largest by market capitalization — is suitable for its solution, which it claims is safer than cold storage, while giving the benefits of asset usability, including some features such as staking, airdrops, and even trading while keeping them in custody.
In its blog post detailing the announcement, it adds:
“Our support for XRP relied on a range of resources, including ones contributed to and maintained by the team at Xpring, Ripple’s developer platform. We used the rippled open source server, the node implementation that powers the XRP Ledger maintained by Xpring. We also used xrpl.org extensively for its clear and helpful documentation of the XRP Ledger.”
Anchorage co-founder and President Diogo Mónica said the custodial solution for XRP was immediately available to institutional investors, and they had further plans to add additional services later on. Mónica wrote:
“The flexibility of the Anchorage platform will allow us to support more advanced XRP functionality like Payment Channels should customer demand require it.”
An original member of Facebook’s Libra Association, Anchorage has allied with the Celo stablecoin as part of its Celo Alliance for Prosperity. It is also supported by other major names in the industry, such as Andreessen Horowitz, Blockchain Capital, and Visa.
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