Ripple chief technology officer David Schwartz says investors should not hope for gains on stablecoins as his firm prepares to launch its new dollar-pegged crypto asset. In a new post on social media platform X, Schwartz says Ripple USD (RLUSD) may experience supply shortages in the early days of its debut given the pre-market demand […]
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The chief technology officer of Ripple Labs says that the government needs to address the alleged unconstitutional unbanking of many crypto and tech founders. In a new thread on the social media platform X, Ripple CTO David Schwartz accuses the government of pressuring banks to cancel unfavored individuals and businesses with no evidence that they […]
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In a recent Joe Rogan interview, Mark Andreesen revealed that the debanking of tech firms caused the Silicon Valley shift toward Trump.
Ripple chief technical officer David Schwartz recently joined the list of tech founders speaking out against Operation Chokepoint 2.0 — a government-run debanking operation against the crypto industry. Schwartz said the government is "addicted to indirect regulation" and laid out four reasons why de-banking undermines the rule of law.
Schwartz argued that debanked entities switch service providers or take their funds underground — thereby evading surveillance and sanctions control altogether. The CTO also said de-banking undermines due process, freedom of speech, and the right against unlawful search and seizure. Schwartz wrote:
"It is easier to pressure banks to cut off disfavored businesses than to make that business illegal," The CTO continued before imploring the government to use lawful and above-board processes to regulate businesses.
The SEC initially misled a court to freeze DEBT Box’s assets, which has since been reversed, and the firm cited the incident as grounds to dismiss the suit.
DEBT Box and other defendants in a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit want the case tossed after the court found the agency lied to secure a temporary restraining order against them.
“The SEC got this case wrong. Badly wrong,” lawyers for Digital Licensing Inc., which does business as DEBT Box, told Utah federal court Judge Robert Shelby in a Dec.
The SEC won a temporary restraining order to freeze DEBT Box assets on Aug.
The agency accused the firm of perpetrating a $50 million fraudulent crypto scheme.
“Not only are such allegations false, but they also fail to meet the basic pleading standards,” it wrote in its latest motion.
A Utah federal court reversed the asset freeze on Nov.
The court found the firm didn’t close the bank accounts, and a $720,000 transfer the SEC alleged was sent overseas was actually sent domestically.
The SEC “misrepresents the state of law regarding crypto assets” in its “fatally flawed pleading,” DEBT Box said.
David Schwartz believes the U.S. legal system is looking more skeptically at SEC cases against various cryptocurrency industry participants.
A court ruling that cleared Ripple's XRP token of being considered a security offering might signal a turn in the tide against regulatory scrutiny of the cryptocurrency ecosystem in the United States and current lawsuits involving the likes of Coinbase and Binance.US and pending ETF applications.
Speaking exclusively to Cointelegraph during the company’s annual Apex developer conference being hosted in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Ripple CTO David Schwartz weighed in on the potential precedent set by a federal judge ruling that XRP was not a security when sold programmatically on cryptocurrency exchanges.
Ripple has been entwined in a protracted legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission since 2020, but its recent part victory may have positive implications for a number of crypto-related lawsuits instituted by the SEC.
Schwartz admitted that the SEC case had cost Ripple business deals that had been on the table, but stressed that the bigger loss was felt in the community as ecosystem support felt stifled by the delisting of XRP across a number of prominent exchanges. This has since changed with the latest ruling in favour of XRP:
“The ruling that we've had so far was sufficient to allow exchanges to relist XRP, and it was big, I think, for the entire ecosystem.”
Schwartz said that the tide was perhaps turning in the United States, where crypto ecosystem participants began considering relocating to different jurisdictions in order to continue operating away from a cloud of regulatory uncertainty:
“I feel bad that I have to tell people that the United States is probably not where they want to be, but the tide is turning. You know, the ruling in our suit that basically said that XRP is not inherently a security, that’s huge.”
Schwartz said that the wider industry was now feeling the scrutiny that Ripple had first endured from the SEC in 2020, with the likes of major cryptocurrency blockchains like Solana, Cardano and Polygon seeing their respective tokens labeled alongside others as unregistered securities in the SEC’s lawsuits against Coinbase earlier in 2023.
“They (SEC) can apply these very same arguments to whatever cryptocurrency you like or whatever business you like. Fortunately, people understand that argument a lot better now that they've seen the SEC go after Coinbase and others and some of the things they've done.”
The Ripple CTO also believes that U.S. judges are looking more skeptically at cases brought forward by the SEC and that companies with the resources are taking a stand that will benefit the wider industry.
“They're starting to get huge pushback from Coinbase and pushback on the ETFs. Hopefully that will prompt some changes at the legislature level, hopefully positive ones.”
Ripple's Apex conference brings together developers building within the XRP Ledger blockchain ecosystem. The blockchain forms the backbone of RippleNet, the platform that manages Ripple's XRP payments system.
Magazine: NFT collapse and monster egos feature in new Murakami exhibition
Ripple CTO David Schwartz says he wants to have as many people as possible to have no barrier to using XRP. In a tweet to his 434,000 Twitter followers, Schwartz says that he is often asked about whether certain technologies should be exclusively compatible with XRP. According to Schwartz, he prefers to live in a […]
The post Ripple CTO Explains How XRP Can Reach As Many People As Possible appeared first on The Daily Hodl.
A new NFT marketplace is giving a hard pass to optional royalties, bucking the trend, and NFTs are getting a new home on Ripple’s XRPL.
While nonfungible token (NFT) marketplaces such as Ethereum (ETH)-based X2Y2, LooksRare, and Solana (SOL)-based Magic Eden have made the switch over to “optional” creator royalties, a newly launched marketplace is taking a hard stand against it.
Find Satoshi Lab, the company behind the popular move-to-earn app StepN has launched its new NFT marketplace named MOOAR on Nov. 1, notably featuring “no optional royalties.”
Instead, its NFT royalty policy will be set to a default of 2% but allows creators to set royalties between 0.5% to 10%. There is no option for 0% royalties, nor can it be set by the user.
“With the raging debate going on surrounding the paying of royalties, we are aware that many users have been vocal in opposing the enforcement of such royalties,” said the MOOAR team in a Medium post.
“Fully empathizing with the sentiment, we strongly believe this ‘cancel culture’ has forced marketplaces into a corner to the point that prominent marketplaces have adopted optional royalties,” it added.
Launch Day! Get #MOOAR!
— MOOAR | Season #1 (@mooarofficial) November 1, 2022
Find Satoshi Lab (@FSLWeb3), the company behind STEPN, is thrilled to announce the launch of MOOAR NFT marketplace & launchpad.
This milestone is one of many on our roadmap to become a one-stop platform for the Web3 Community. ⬇ [1/10] pic.twitter.com/IfSSo2RWaS
On Aug. 27, Ethereum-based NFT marketplace X2Y2 announced it would be introducing an option that allows buyers to set the royalty fee when buying an NFT.
With the new update, buyers on the platform will be given the liberty of setting the amount of royalties they want to contribute to an NFT project. This means that some creators may not receive royalties when their artworks are sold.
The controversial move was followed by the Solana-based NFT marketplace Magic Eden on Oct. 15, which announced it would also be moving to an optional royalty model after “difficult reflection and discussion with many creators.”
Less than two weeks later on Oct. 27, NFT marketplace LooksRare became the latest to succumb to pressure from buyers, announcing it was doing away with enforcing creator royalties, allowing buyers to choose to pay royalties on an opt-in basis.
Credit card giant Visa has become the latest major company set to cash in on FIFA World Cup-related nonfungible tokens (NFTs) — unveiling a charity auction for five NFTs ahead of the upcoming tournament in Qatar.
The auction is in partnership with crypto exchange Crypto.com, with all auction proceeds going to Street Child United, a charitable organization promoting the rights of impoverished children.
Each NFT features digital art inspired by icon goals from five famed soccer players including Jared Borgetti, Tim Cahill, Carli Lloyd, Michael Owen, and Maxi Rodriguez, and is part of the “Visa Masters of Movement.”
The credit card company has been a long supporter of NFTs and its ability to provide a “promising medium for fan engagement.”
In a report released on Aug. 23, 2021, Visa said that “NFTs appeal to collectors, fans, teams, leagues, and talent.”
In particular, NFTs can become primary sources of fan engagement, customer relationship management, and newer revenue streams, it said.
Visa’s announcement also comes on the same day that Crypto.com announced it will now be able to self-issue its own Crypto.com Visa card in Singapore, after becoming a Visa Associate Program Member in the city-state.
The Crypto.com Visa card will allow the exchange’s users in Singapore to use it for everyday purchases and earn rewards in CRO coins.
Visa is the Official Payment Technology Partner of FIFA. Other notable sponsors include Crypto.com which became an official sponsor in March, and blockchain network Algorand, which inked a partnership in May as FIFA’s official blockchain platform.
As of Oct. 31, Ripple’s XRPL blockchain has officially become a new home for NFTs.
RippleX developers have been working on the project since the XLS-20 proposal was filed on May 25, 2021, which proposed the goal to bring NFTs to the XRP Ledger.
At the time, the team described the proposal as one that would introduce extensions to the XRP Ledger that would support a “native non-fungible token type, along with operations to enumerate, purchase, sell and hold such tokens.”
Ripple CTO David Schwartz told his 395,600 Twitter followers on Oct. 31 that the XLS-20 standard has now been enabled on the XRP Ledger Mainnet after a vote approved the roll-out of the technology.
Schwartz noted that “this presents a key milestone for developers and creators to tokenize any asset and build innovative Web3 projects with utility.”
Thanks to the collective effort of the #XRPL community and @RippleXDev engineers, XLS-20 is now enabled on the XRP Ledger Mainnet and a few NFTs have already been minted. (1/4)
— David "JoelKatz" Schwartz (@JoelKatz) October 31, 2022
In an accompanying Nov. 1 blog post, Schwartz said the benefits of launching NFTs on the XRP Ledger include much lower costs for minting, trading and otherwise transferring NFTs compared to “leading layer-1 blockchain solutions.”
He also said their “no-smart contracts” approach will make NFTs on the XRPL less vulnerable to hacks, while NFTs will include “automatic royalties” which essentially allow creators to be given a share of revenue whenever an NFT is bought or sold.
The indie developer behind farming sim game Coral Island has taken to Twitter to warn its followers of a scammer impersonating them on the internet and purporting to be involved in “GameFi” and NFTs.
The developer Stairway Games pointed to the doppelganger account on Twitter on Oct. 31, clarifying that Coral Island “is not an NFT game” and the page has no affiliation with Coral Island.
Related: Steph Curry files trademark for the Curryverse, where players earn NFTs
The fake Coral Island Twitter page in question describes itself as “Re-imagined farm sim game goes GameFi. Enter the farmverse!” and links to a similar Instagram page, as well as a fully-decked-out website using assets, lifted directly from the developers.
The website includes sections such as “Roadmap” and “Tokenomics,” with claims that it would launch staking, airdrops, character NFTs, and a “token earning system” in the future.
Hey folks, this is not us. @coralislandgame is the only Coral Island game twitter page. We are not an NFT game and the page below has no affiliation to Coral Island. Thank you! pic.twitter.com/Aei1650McT
— Stairway Games (@stairwaygames) October 31, 2022
Coral Island is a farming simulator game currently in early access, it’s said to be a mix of “Harvest Moon, Story of Seasons, Stardew Valley and a tiny bit of Animal Crossing,” according to one user review on gaming platform Steam.
The nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace for American video game retailer GameStop has officially gone live on Ethereum layer-2 blockchain ImmutableX, all part of the latest Web3 push from the gaming retailer.
There’s been pushback from Silicon Valley CEOs about the current iterations of the Metaverse. Microsoft gaming chief Phil Spencer called it a “poorly built video game,” while Snap CEO Evan Spiegel hinted that the current iterations of the concept are very basic, and he won’t feel like spending time inside it after a long day of work.
According to an announcement from Ripple’s core development team Ripplex, developers have introduced the first step toward Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility with the XRP-based sidechain XRPL. The XRPL is now live on Devnet and developers can “assess available technologies,” alongside deploying “existing Solidity apps on the EVM sidechain.” Ripple Core Developers and Peersyst Reveal […]
Ripple may be a bit late to the NFT party, but the XRP Ledger will attempt to become an industry game changer and challenge Ethereum's hegemony.
Nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, have been dominating the crypto market this year. With sales topping over $2.5 billion during the first half of 2021, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that both the crypto community and mainstream creators are launching NFTs in hopes of driving revenue and engagement. The rise of the Metaverse has also pushed the adoption of NFTs, demonstrating the value of nonfungibles for major brands and social media platforms alike.
While NFT sales soar, the Ethereum blockchain continues to rule the space. For instance, a recent report from Cointelegraph Research found that Ethereum represented at least 97% of every NFT market sector, which includes games, collectibles and marketplaces. It’s also interesting to point out that blockchain analytics firm Moonstream found that around 17% of addresses control more than 80% of all NFTs on Ethereum, demonstrating the vast inequality that still exists in the NFT market.
Although this is the case, it’s important to note that nonfungible tokens are still a very new and early concept. Even though Ethereum is currently dominating the market, there are significant competitors.
For example, blockchain payments firm Ripple recently announced an investment in the NFT marketplace Mintable, which would allow the platform to integrate with the XRP Ledger (XRPL) to enable creators to securely and efficiently sell their NFTs. In addition, in September this year, Ripple launched a $250 million creators fund to foster innovation in tokenization, specifically focused on nonfungible tokens.
Given Ripple’s recent involvement in the NFT space, Cointelegraph spoke to David Schwartz, Ripple's chief technology officer, during NFT NYC to learn more about the company’s growing interest in nonfungible tokens. Schwarz also discussed other topics including the rise of central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, the goals behind a Wrapped XRP (wXRP) token and Ripple’s upcoming roadmap.
Cointelegraph: Thanks for joining me, David. First off, what did you discuss during your talk at NFT NYC?
David Schwartz: My talk at NFT NYC was mostly about carbon-neutral NFTs and solving the energy consumption problem. Obviously, we aren't going to solve climate change in the blockchain space, but the least we can do is not make it a lot worse. It's not a technical problem — we know how to not consume that much energy, it’s just a matter of convincing people to adopt the technologies that are more climate-friendly.
Cointelegraph: Ripple is now letting people create NFTs on the XRP Ledger. Can you discuss this in detail?
DS: We were a little late to the party, but not too late. If NFTs are successful, then we are all still early. We initially started to look at how people wanted to use NFTs and realized that a lot of the challenges people were facing were due to the technology being very primitive.
"Every company wanting to get into the space needed a tremendous amount of specific expertise, which isn't a good way to grow. So, building that tooling is what we've been focused on. Also, sometimes money is the obstacle."
When someone has a good idea with the right tooling and the right team, sometimes they just need more money to scale. We can help them overcome this to prove the technology will work the way they want it to.
Cointelegraph: You also mentioned that the XRP Ledger is energy efficient. Could you explain why this is the case?
DS: Yes, the reason why proof-of-work, or PoW, systems like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) consume energy is that they are specifically designed to create artificial scarcity. You'd want artificial scarcity if you are trying to profit from something that has to be scarce. You also need artificial scarcity for something to be valuable, and you need to convince customers that the scarcity is not artificial.
So, PoW creates artificial scarcity by using something scarce, which is energy. When energy is purely used to create artificial scarcity though, it drives up cost. The only reason you’d want to do this is if you are getting a cut of the money. Only the people getting those fees are promoting that technology.
In the XRP Ledger, no one gets transaction fees, so no one wants high fees. The fee literally covers the cost of processing the transaction. The fact is that the XRP Ledger works just as well without artificial scarcity.
Cointelegraph: Are there any other benefits of using the XRP Ledger for NFTs versus Ethereum?
DS: Yes, one of them is the scalability, or the number of transactions per second. There are things you can do on Ethereum though that you can’t do on the XRP Ledger. That’s why a lot of decentralized finance (DeFi) work today is happening on Ethereum. You can do almost anything you can envision, like things with loans, or TradeFi, or mortgages and staking. We don't have those capabilities on the XRP Ledger today, but you can mint NFTs.
We don't have those capabilities on the XRP Ledger today, but you can mint NFTs. We also have a decentralized exchange (DEX), and you can issue new tokens. Payments are cheap and fast, so to some extent, it's a fundamental engineering tradeoff.
"If you want to do everything, then you can't be very good at anything. The XRP Ledger has a list of things it does really well. If one of those are the things you need, that's great. But, if one isn't what you need, then you need to move to something more general."
Part of Ethereum’s low transaction speed and cost is due to the fact that you can build more flexible technologies on the blockchain. Most people who build on the XRP Ledger are doing complex things, but for technical reasons, they don't need these to be right on the ledger.
Cointelegraph: What are the best use cases for someone wanting to mint an NFT on the XRP Ledger?
DS: Today, the use cases are mainly collectibles. On the XRP Ledger, the cost is a lot lower, so if you are building an NFT on Ethereum it would have to be worth at least $500, and even then the fees would be close to $100. The fees are much less on the XRP Ledger and that allows for a broader range of use cases.
I think most of the use cases today are collectibles broadly speaking, like works of art, things that connect to digital art, things that connect to musicians. But I think over time, we will see the NFT market broaden.
Cointelegraph: I also wanted to discuss Wrapped XRP. Could you go into detail about that?
DS: Wrapped XRP is an asset that is designed to track the price of XRP. For every Wrapped XRP, there is an XRP somewhere tied into an ecosystem that keeps that XRP locked until the Wrapped XRP is free. The idea here is they should track close in price. Wrapped XRP will behave similarly to XRP. For instance, if all you are using XRP for is moving value, and you have something whose value is the same, then these should serve as substitutes in the market.
"The disadvantage of Wrapped XRP is that you can't move it cheaply and quickly on the XRP Ledger like XRP. But, the advantage is that you can use it in DEX on Ethereum."
For instance, if you have 500 XRP to use in a DEX and you just can't do it today at any price, then Wrapped XRP would allow you to get the tokenomics of XRP and the semantics of Ethereum. That will help keep XRP from getting locked out of features. We can expect to see the Wrapped XRP launch in December.
Cointelegraph: What’s next for Ripple?
DS: We've been pushing hard for CBDCs. What's exciting is that there are a lot of people in the space who don't really know what CBDCs are capable of. Our vision is to imagine that every financial institution in the world is able to settle every fiat currency with every other financial institution in seconds. That's huge, but it takes interoperability and security.
"If you are going to build a payment system that big, then you need a security model that isn't what swift uses, and blockchains pretty much don't have security problems."
Another feature is interoperability. For instance, the United States couldn't build such a system because Saudi Arabia wouldn't use it. But, if Saudi Arabia built a system, and the U.S. built a system, then there has to be a standard for interoperability. Otherwise, banks in the U.S. wouldn’t be able to settle euros with banks in Europe.
Another thing we are working on is federated side chains that allow assets to move freely between blockchains. Wrapped XRP is an example of this since it allows XRP to move between the XRP Ledger and Etherem, but these are point solutions to specific problems. The advantage of solutions to a specific problem is that it allows a type of innovation that is currently not possible.
Related: Beyond the NFT hype: Creating lasting business models for artists
Today, if you want Ethereum smart contracts, you have to build on a blockchain with Ethereum smart contracts. You also have to follow rules like how big a smart contact can be. Therefore, you can't innovate at the level of changing those rules. What federated sidechains do is it allows you to innovate at the lowest level, so users can build a blockchain with whatever fees they want and whatever assets they want. It can be public or private, and it can be live in a short period of time with real money.
This is great for developers who need to solve specific problems, or who want to make changes to other blockchains and need to convince people that those changes work and are safe. Federated sidechains provide a recipe today to build live blockchains that allow users to innovate in the blockchain itself.
