JPMorgan Adopts Blockchain – What about XRP?

News is afire today on the announcement by JP Morgan of their own cryptocurrency stablecoin pegged to the US Dollar.  JPM are one of the world’s biggest banks and facilitate over $6 trillion in transactions daily.  The so called JPM Coin allows them to use the blockchain and cryptocurrency technology to make these transactions, overseas in particular, instantly instead of the slow 40 year old tech of SWIFT.

One could look at CEO Jamie Dimon’s comments in September 2017 that Bitcoin was a ‘fraud’ as either ironic in the face of this announcement or tactical as JPM Coin establishes itself as a competitor.  Dimon has since refuted he even said that, and history shows JPM bought up a heap of Bitcoin after his comments briefly drove down the price.  Regardless, his business has now fully embraced the technology many describe as the biggest disruptor to banking in generations.

For now it is solely for institutional client use and purely for funds transfers, but in an interview with CNBC, their head of blockchain projects ominously stated:

“The applications are frankly quite endless; anything where you have a distributed ledger which involves corporations or institutions can use this.”

He said the 3 initial applications are:

• Cross-border payments. Payments across international lines can be settled in real time, avoiding settlement delays that can occur via wire transfer.
• Securities transactions. Similar to the above, JPM Coin can collapse the existing time gap between when the transaction is settled and when the receiving party is paid for it.
• Huge corporate transaction consolidation. Large institutional clients who rely on JPMorgan's treasury services will be able to move money to subsidiaries around the world with greater fluidity.

Whilst some reports view this as a threat to Ripple (XRP), most see it as reinforcement and implicit large institutional endorsement of the technology of which Ripple is the leader.  Ripple is institutionally and currency agnostic whereas JPM Coin is built for JPM alone and on the USD alone.  The reinforcement of the technology is very clear.  This is the new way to bypass the slow and expensive SWIFT system.  As we’ve reported recently, the likes of Russia and China are well progressed on ditching the US centric SWIFT system as well.

This tweet says it all:

Our opinion is that this is extremely exciting for not just the crypto space, but for XRP in particular.  JPM Coin is exposed to both a single financial institution and a single fiat currency issued by an essentially insolvent government.  XRP is a mature technology platform that any financial institution can use to transfer any currency anywhere in the world instantly.  JPM are merely highlighting how good this is.  For newcomers we previously outlined XRP’s tech here.

Of course, as of this week the world has 2 new stablecoins that remove that USD and bank issue as well.  Gold Standard (AUS) and Silver Standard (AGS) are stablecoins fully and transparently backed by real gold and silver bullion.  Want to cheaply send 5g or 50kg of gold from Australia to Kazakhstan instantly and at near zero cost? No problem, buy AUS and send it to the recipient.  Want to buy 1 tonne of silver without the storage hassles?  No problem, buy AGS and store it in an offline secure wallet.  Want to diversify out of a falling Aussie dollar or cash in a bank under the threat of bail in laws?  No problem, buy real gold and real silver digitally through Gold Standard (AUS) or Silver Standard (AGS).  If you missed the launch article read that here or visit the website www.goldsilverstandard.com .  It’s the new way to buy and sell gold and silver.