The largest social media network has reversed its ban on cryptocurrency ads, after a blanket ban in January that prohibited “ads that promote financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices, such as binary options, initial coin offerings and cryptocurrency.”

Facebook made it clear that the original ban was deliberately broad as bitcoin-related scams were mushrooming in the largely unregulated space. The social network promised it would be working “to better detect deceptive and misleading advertising practices... We will revisit this policy and how we enforce it as our signals improve.”

In a recent Facebook Business blog post, Rob Leathern, Product Management Director wrote: “starting June 26, we’ll be updating our policy to allow ads that promote cryptocurrency and related content from pre-approved advertisers. But we’ll continue to prohibit ads that promote binary options and initial coin offerings.”

Ex-Messenger executive to run new blockchain team

Facebook has not only loosened up its policies around cryptocurrency ads. Reported Recode:

What is the blockchain? And how should Facebook be using it?

Finding answers to those questions is now the responsibility of David Marcus, the Facebook executive who has, until this week, been running the company’s standalone messaging app, Messenger. Marcus is leaving Messenger to take over a new internal team dedicated to exploring blockchain technology, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

The team will be small at launch, fewer than a dozen people, but will include a few key Instagram executives who are moving over to join Marcus: Instagram’s VP of Engineering, James Everingham, and Instagram’s VP of Product, Kevin Weil.

Recode also suggested that:

Facebook’s decision to pursue blockchain technology will most certainly add some validity to the crypto industry, which has been very chaotic. This doesn’t mean that Facebook will build its own cryptocurrency, but there are many ways that blockchain technology could be used that have nothing to do with cryptocurrencies, including encrypted data storage.

Meanwhile, over at The Motley Fool, it was suggested that:

The reversal of the crypto advertising ban despite the regulatory heat on Facebook suggests founder Mark Zuckerberg is not against the crypto space and Facebook is investing heavily in the blockchain research space already.

Given it is able to recruit the brightest tech heads out of leading U.S. universities and the Silicon Valley marketplace investors can expect whatever Facebook’s blockchain working group comes up with to be market-leading, with a digital currency or payments system of sorts likely to be flagship products.

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⚡️Allumanauts⚡️We’re excited to announce that Ethereum Classic (ETC) deposits will begin September 14th at 12PM IST (GMT+5:30), which means that along with BTC, BCH, ETH, XRP, LTC, FUEL and TrueUSD now Ethereum Classic will be available for trading on Alluma.

What is Ethereum Classic?

Ethereum Classic, a continuation of the original Ethereum blockchain, is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts; applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third-party interference.

Find general information as well as a list of services that support Ethereum Classic visit EthereumClassic.org

Up-to-date network statistics can be found at Ethereum Classic Block Explorer.

Source code for Ethereum Classic and related projects are available on GitHub.

The Ethereum Hard Fork

The decentralized autonomous organization, or The DAO, was a venture capital fund built on the Ethereum Blockchain for the purpose of raising funds to invest in Ethereum based decentralized applications (DApps).

In June 2016, The DAO was hacked and over US$50 million was stolen from the fund. A controversial decision was made by the core Ethereum team to revert the hack and return the stolen tokens. The resulting hard fork to revert the DAO attack created a modified ledger (still known as Ethereum) while the original code remained and became what we know today as Ethereum Classic.

Ethereum Classic (ETC) is now listed on the Alluma Exchange. Take advantage of one of the lowest buying/selling fee.

Note: Ethereum (ETC) withdrawal fees is zero for a limited time. Start Trading

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⚡️Allumanauts⚡️ The third week of the Alluma Trading Grand Prix 🏁 starts today with the launch of our Ethereum Classic trading competition.

* More than $4,000 in rewards up for grabs for Top 10 traders by volume
* The competition starts today, Sept 14th at 12 PM (IST) and will be run through September 20th, 8:30 PM (IST)
* You must trade at least $1,000 in ETC tokens (buy or sell) to qualify. (You’ll automatically earn 500 LUMA assured bonus on qualifying!)
* Invite your friends to get 10% of their trade volume added to your total during the competition.

Here’s how to participate:
1. Sign in or create a free account on Alluma
2. Start trading any pairs in the LTC token over the next 7 days!
3. Check rankings in our real-time leaderboard

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It’s important to remember what consumer problem Ripple is trying to solve - that of slow and expensive cross-border payments, whether person to person or business to business. Today the world sends more than $155 trillion across borders. This is a major global issue for individual consumers and businesses alike. Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple’s CEO is often quoted in various sources as saying that it is physically quicker to fly actual bank notes from say New York to London (yes, he means on a plane), than to send it through the correspondent banking system from the US to the UK. He is correct of course, if you assume that you send the payment from a bank in the US to a different bank in the UK.

Correspondent banking is dominated globally by a small number of banks, with JPMorgan (Jamie Dimon’s bank) being the global no. 1. It’s big business and earns enormous revenues for the likes of JPMorgan, HSBC, Citibank etc.

 Why have banks and remittance companies signed-up for Ripple ?

Firstly, what they have actually sign-up for, is RippleNet. Ripple now has over 100 banks and payment providers. RippleNet is a decentralized global blockchain network of these entities that use Ripple’s distributed financial technology and provides real-time messaging, clearing and settlement of financial transactions.

This is the first time such a network has existed before and Ripple have done a great job at on-boarding these banks. When you join the network, you sign-up to their technology, and their tech of course provides a key part of the overall solution.

The newest members of RippleNet include Credit Agricole, Currencies Direct, and they’re now on the path to join existing members like SEB and Siam Commercial Bank who have deployed Ripple solutions commercially.

 

What are the benefits of RippleNet?

RippleNet has a standardized ruleset, which has been created with input from the banks, a liquidity solution which reduces costs (more about that shortly), plus speed and traceability of payments.

Similar to say Visa or MasterCard, RippleNet provides a consistent payments experience through a (network member) Rulebook, which encompasses a set of payment rules and standards. Those of you familiar with payments will know that you can’t have a payment network without such standards and rules. This Rulebook delivers operational certainty and legal clarity for transactions over RippleNet. Both members and users sign a Network Service Agreement and implement the rules and standards as outlined in the Rulebook.

The RippleNet Solutions

RippleNet has two main solutions:

xCurrent which processes real-time payments between the network from a messaging and settlement perspective.
xRapid which provides ‘on-demand liquidity’ through access to a liquidity pool of digital assets i.e. XRP, that eliminates the need to hold nostro accounts in destination currencies.
First hand experience of the liquidity problem in cross-border payments

I can relate to this problem from first hand experience. Let’s take the problem of trying to transfer funds from say the US to Mexico, just like the stream of remittance companies now signing-up to xRapid. Note that US bank account to Mexico bank account or US over the counter payment to a Mexico bank account, are very popular transactions types for remittances. The issues with this are as follows:

Identifying receiving banks: You have to talk to a lot of banks in Mexico in the first place to find an appropriate one. You may even have to run an RFP

Bi-lateral contracts: Once you have identified your partner bank, you have to agree a bilateral contract. In the contract, you will need to cover topics such as messaging, settlement, commercial fees etc. This is a significant undertaking and the work involved can be significant. If a bank has already signed up to a network though like RippleNet, you don’t have to do this.

Pre-funding nostro accounts: Worst of all in this scenario, given the volume of payouts in Mexico, any Mexican bank will require a large ’pre-fund’ into a dedicated account (i.e nostro account) of the sending party. This pre-fund is the source of the liquidity in the solution, or in other words the funds to payout remittances in Mexico whenever they are demanded by receivers. This process ties-up expensive capital that could be deployed elsewhere in any business
Monitoring and topping-up the pre-fund: The pre-fund also has to be monitored and topped-up which requires reasonable effort and supporting processes.

This end to end process is not to be underestimated in terms of required effort and represents a significant hurdle.

How does xRapid solve this problem? 

This is where the use of XRP comes in. A payment journey from a US bank to a Mexican bank with xRapid in our example looks like this:

Both US and Mexican banks connect directly to digital asset exchanges in both the US and Mexico
When a transaction is originated, USD is exchanged into XRP in the US digital asset exchange
In seconds, XRP is sent to the Mexican digital asset exchange and then converted into Mexican Pesos. So the exposure time to any XRP volatility is very short – indeed often commercial terms can be agreed with the asset exchanges to remove 100% of the risk for the banks
The pesos are then made available on the Mexican side for the beneficiaries
The diagram below illustrates the XRP to MXN (Peso) process:


So in short, having this connection to xRapid solves the problem in a very neat way and shows XRP can be leveraged to enable the process.

Recent success of xRapid with remittance companies

In the last 12 months, Ripple has on-boarded the great and the good in the remittance world including MoneyGram, Western Union and more recently ViaAmericas. Many were slightly skeptical at first now see the benefits.

According to recent pilot results, participating financial institutions saw a savings of 40-70 percent compared to what they normally pay expensive foreign exchange providers.

In addition, an average xRapid payment took just over two minutes, compared to today’s average of 2-3 days when sending cross-border payments. The leg of the transfer that touches the XRP Ledger only takes 2-3 seconds with the additional processing time happening while the transfer moves across the intermediary digital asset exchanges and local payment rails.

“It’s encouraging to see positive xRapid results because they validate what many in our industry already know: certain digital assets have utility,” said Asheesh Birla, SVP of Product at Ripple. “XRP’s utility lies in its speed and scalability, which makes it the perfect fit for cross-border payments. The XRP Ledger can send 1,500 transactions per second.”

The financial institutions included in these pilots were testing payments from the U.S. to Mexico. This is a popular and competitive market, so payment providers are looking to gain a competitive advantage by lowering costs and speeding up payments with xRapid. Up until now, they have been required to either pre-fund bank accounts in Mexico - leading to tied-up capital - or go through the correspondent banking network, which is expensive and slow.

“We were very pleased with our pilot results. It’s clear that xRapid can lower liquidity costs while increasing payment speed and transparency in a way that facilitates rigorous compliance controls. We believe that digital assets like XRP will play a key role in the future of cross-border payments, helping to safely address some of the structural inefficiencies of legacy settlement infrastructure as their adoption grows. We look forward to exploring next steps with Ripple.” - Paul Dwyer, Co-founder and CEO, Viamericas.

Moving on to Commercial FX payments

Another big prize is commercial foreign exchange payments. This is because transaction sizes are much bigger than person to person payments, and clients typically transact on a much more frequent basis.

Currencies Direct a UK based commercial FX company were one of the first, but now Toronto based Cambridge Global Payments, which has over 13,000 clients around the world and handles $20 billion in international transactions annually, is piloting both xCurrent and xRapid.

Mark Frey, Chief Operating Officer for Cambridge Global Payments, is confident that blockchain powered solutions like xRapid can not only help Cambridge improve their customers’ payments journey, but also spur critical innovation in their industry..

“We are excited for the insights this pilot program is expected to deliver, and we will use that information to help both Cambridge and FLEETCOR develop our use cases for blockchain in international payments,” said Frey.

Conclusions

A number of points spring to mind:

It seems to me that Ripple is pushing hard to grow the RippleNet network and to continue to iteratively improve its products.
Remittance companies were reluctant to team-up with Ripple as first, possibly because they can see the value of their networks reduced and therefore their margins falling. But if fees to send money fall, it is likely that the category will grow.

If the likes of Ripple continue to play a bigger role in managing the ‘cross border payments plumbing’ going forward, then brands will become more important in the remittance business. As a marketing guy, I think remittance companies who have weak brands may fall by the wayside.

With any network, you need toz` get a critical mass point (of members), for it to really take off. We are not there yet, but the pace of partner acquisition and piloting at Ripple is certainly increasing.

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At the start of this week, the regulation of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies (including ICOs) took effect in Thailand. The country’s tax code has also been updated to include taxation of cryptocurrencies at 15%, according to local media.

Explained Thailand’s Finance Minister Apisak Tantivorawong:

“It [the decree] was not meant to prohibit cryptocurrencies, initial coin offerings (ICOs) and other digital asset-related transactions, but to protect investors.”

The main thrust of the degree is to regulate crypto operators like any other financial institution.

Reported the Bangkok Post:

“These licensed operators of digital assets are deemed financial institutions under the anti-money laundering law.

The SEC has a wide-ranging power to stipulate rules to implement the decree, including regulations concerning calculation of the value of digital assets into Thai baht, and issuing and offering digital tokens for sale and the conduct of digital asset business.

The operator of digital asset business must follow the rules common to financial institutions [to absorb risk, protect investors, and prevent fraud and money laundering].”

According to the new decree, all cryptocurrency operators will be regulated by the Thai Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and are required to register with the SEC within 90 days from May 14.

Bitcoin.com summarizes the key responsibilities and authority of the SEC under the new decree:

“The first is to regulate the issuance and offering of cryptocurrencies and digital asset businesses. The second is to set the fees and requirements for the registration and approval of cryptocurrencies and their operators. The third is to establish a guideline for dealing with potential problems. The fourth concerns all other areas not previously mentioned.”

The Bangkok Post reported that operators in violation of the regulations face serious penalties:

“Dissemination of false or misleading information related to the financial condition or operating performance of an offer or of digital tokens or material features of the tokens themselves that could affect their prices or a decision to invest is punishable by a two-year jail term or a fine from 500,000 to 2 million baht.”

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These past two weeks our tech team has pumped out an amazing amount of awesome features and fixes that you’re going to love. We launched our mobile app on android (4.8 stars on Google Play) and strapped ourselves in to support the largest crypto trading competition in India- the Alluma Trading Grand Prix.

Here’s what we’ve been working on.
Litecoin (LTC) now on Alluma

We’re excited to kick this week’s update off with a new coin listing! Now you can trade Litecoin along with BTC, BCH, ETH, XRP, FUEL and TrueUSD on Alluma.

Trading Grand Prix Leaderboards

One of our favorite achievements from the dev team this week has been the creation of live trade competition leaderboards. The #1 feedback from our first competition was that competitors wanted to see rankings and volumes throughout the contest.

To do this, we analyse trading data across the contest pairs and provide almost real-time trade reports for you and your referrals.

View this week’s competition featuring Litecoin!

Blockchain Info for withdrawals
We’ve added more transparency to our withdrawal procedures across all coins. Now when you send crypto, you can see the receiver’s address, transaction ID and explore your transaction as it’s processed on the blockchain.


Public Trade Screen and Markets

You can now take our exchange for a test drive by visiting our public trade screen and markets page before signing up. See all our markets, view our open order book, and demo all the advanced order types without registering or going through KYC.


Public trade screen at https://trade.alluma.io/advance-trade#ETHBTC
Email > Username
One of the most popular requests from our community was to support login via email rather than username. Well, ask and you shall receive!

During this last week, we moved away from using usernames in favor of email address instead. If you previously created an account with a username, don’t worry, your account is still active, safe, and accessible — just enter your account email on login in place of your username.


(I’m also excited with a new look of our sign-in and sign-up pages 😄)

Android Feedback

Have you tried Alluma on android yet? We’ve made it easy to trade and manage your portfolio on the go. Our team received lots of positive feedback this week and closer to the end of the week we released an updated version that brings optimisation and small UI changes. Download Alluma on Android and leave us your feedback.


As always, I want to add that your feedback is very important for us. We’re reading all of it and it truly helps our team identify new ways to improve our platform and processes. Stay tuned for more updates!

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Sat, Sep 15, 2018, 5:00 PM: Alluma is a strong industry proponent of the role of education in cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, and believe that providing the right learning tools to the com

Where
Innov8 Koramangala innov8, 3, 20 Main Rd, Koramangala Industrial Layout, Koramangala, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560034 Bangalore

When
Sat, Sep 15, 2018, 5:00 PM

Click here to register: http://meetu.ps/e/FPc06/xQSHF/d?utm_source=swadesh&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Meetup

⚡️Allumanauts⚡️

We’re excited to announce that Litecoin deposits will begin September 7th at 12PM IST (GMT+5:30), which means that along with BTC, BCH, ETH, XRP, FUEL and TrueUSD now Litecoin will be available for trading on Alluma.

 

What is a Litecoin?

Litecoin is a peer-to-peer Internet currency that enables instant, near-zero cost payments to anyone in the world. Litecoin is an open source, global payment network that is fully decentralized without any central authorities. Mathematics secures the network and empowers individuals to control their own finances.

Who is behind Litecoin?

Founded by Charlie Lee, Litecoin is an open source software project released under the MIT/X11 license which gives you the power to run, modify, and copy the software and to distribute, at your option, modified copies of the software. The software is released in a transparent process that allows for independent verification of binaries and their corresponding source code.

Find general information as well as a list of services that support Litecoin at the Litecoin Wiki.

Up-to-date network statistics can be found at Litecoin Block Explorer Charts.

Source code for Litecoin Core and related projects are available on GitHub.

Key advantages of Litecoin

key advantages of Litecoin over bitcoinsource: Medium.com

1. Blockchain: The Litecoin blockchain is capable of handling higher transaction volume than its counterpart - Bitcoin. Due to more frequent block generation, the network supports more transactions without a need to modify the software in the future.

2. Faster Processing: Merchants get faster confirmation times, while still having ability to wait for more confirmations when selling bigger ticket items.

3. Wallet Encryption: Wallet encryption allows you to secure your wallet, so that you can view transactions and your account balance, but are required to enter your password before spending litecoins. This provides protection from wallet-stealing viruses and trojans as well as a sanity check before sending payments.

4. Mining Rewards: The Litecoin network is therefore scheduled to produce 84 million litecoins, which is 4 times as many currency units as Bitcoin.

Litecoin is now listed on Alluma Exchange. Take advantage of one of the lowest buying/selling fee.

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