Colin Wu is a dedicated crypto-journalist who has been following every Bitcoin move ever since it was first introduced. The Chinese reporter has noticed that the most recently mined Bitcoin block has four times more transactions record in comparison to the average ones. In a new tweet, Wu reports that Bitcoin block number 687249 is meant to have about 4,075 transactions in total.
For a regular block unit, the numbers of transactions are about 1609. However, the new record is nothing to be celebrating about. As noted by Wu, due to the crackdown on Bitcoin mining in China, the hash rates have dropped drastically for the flagship cryptocurrency. As the panic is setting in, the high number of transactions indicates that Bitcoin production has slowed down significantly.
Ripple has Issued a Report Criticizing Outdated, Slow, and Expensive Mode of Cross-Border Payments by Traditional Banks
Ripple has recently issued a report on the Twitter account. The report discusses several aspects that qualify the traditional bank payment infrastructure to be unfit for keeping up with the new demands of the market. At the beginning of the report, the readers are informed about the amount of increase in SME payments and the growth of the B2B business sector. Since the pandemic, the report argues that more people have started to work from home and use online stores to buy their goods.
In the second phase, the report scans the issues faced by the consumers from the traditional banking system. The main points for businesses sending money cross-border are limited visibility, zero traceability for the correct arrival time, slow settlements due to the involvement of corresponding banks, and high transaction fees that increase the costs beyond comparison.
While discussing the drawbacks of legacy banking SMEs and cross-border payment systems, Ripple management remarked that blockchain technology has the potential to solve all these issues. The firm claimed that two of its major clients have also switched to RippleNet ODL services for creating faster and cheaper payment channels. BeeTech based in Brazil and InstaReM based in the UK would be able to transfer cross-border payments to remote areas like Germany, Spain, Italy, and Portugal.
Some of the visible benefits of the ODL services are freedom from $30-$100 transaction cost on every transfer, faster settlement of account that takes more than 2-4 days otherwise, and freedom from foreign exchange rate errors. As claimed by Ripple, the new ODL services have the potential to support the increasing pressure of SME payments and provide businesses with a better and more efficient alternative.
