iBankCoin
18 years in Wall Street, left after finding out it was all horseshit. Founder/ Master and Commander: iBankCoin, finance news and commentary from the future.
Joined Nov 10, 2007
23,426 Blog Posts

Morning Poppers (MOAR Edition)

Bitcoins are taking a breather this morning, in its stead is Litecoin +28%, Iota +13.5% and Ripple +11%. My favorite crypto, Monaco, is higher by only 3.5%, pedestrian/equity-esque type gains.

WTI is up 0.6% and doesn’t look like it wants lower. The only thing lower is Nasdaq futures, off by 1. The US yield curve is static at 56bps.

Here’s the other headlines.

Northrop Grumman upgraded to Overweight from Neutral at JP Morgan
HCA upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Citigroup; Added to Focus List
Columbia Sportswear downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Goldman
Michaels Stores downgraded to Hold from Buy at Deutsche Bank
Imperva downgraded to Underweight from Neutral at JP Morgan
Freeport-McMoRan upgraded to Equal-Weight from Underweight at Morgan Stanley

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22 comments

  1. sarcrilege

    Monaco. Me like romance in the morning to set me right.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUu8SXvs5b8

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  2. badduck

    Today’s bitcoin toys are XNET, SRAX and I think $TEUM ready to rise from the dead.

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  3. reversion

    Fly, too early or a reach to buy puts on AMTD based on the trading their are losing as ppl migrate to cryptos?

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  4. boyaj

    How come $GROW is a bitcoin play? Can’t find much research on that. Thanks good sir.

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  5. hackalert

    Love it haha

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YdWKdXhWac

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  6. Marc David

    Ripple seems really interesting and one of the few cryptos not trading at $400 a pop. It’s built for banks from the start. There doesn’t seem to be a limit much like the # of dollars printed over a lifetime but there’s a limit monthly?

    But owning it is not all that easy. You have to go thru one of these less than stellar exchanges or use a decent exchange like Coinbase and then use ShapeShift.io to convert from Bitcoin to Ripple XRP.

    The fees to convert from Bitcoin are outrageous and I don’t see it getting less.

    Your posts on the subject are very interesting. I’m playing with toy money anyway and I store everything on a local wallet (more fees from Coinbase to send money that way but if they ever got hacked, there’s nothing there).

    Keep up the nice posts. So much more interested in this than the political stuff.

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    • bushwacker2

      You can buy Ripple on Kraken.

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    • Good Shepherd

      been in btc since 2014, bought eth at 9 in feb.

      I LOVE RIPPLE. Here is my iBC full review for you distinguished gentlemen:

      1. HOW DO I BUY & HOW DOES RIPPLE WORK?
      XRP is not hard to acquire if you can get off the retail exchanges and trade through poloniex or kraken. Coinbase is basically a portal to get fiat into the system. Ripple is a fascinating company with laser focus on solving the escrow-transaction problem in traditional banking networks. They have effectively done so. XRP transactions clear in 1-2 seconds, with the throughput of the VISA network, for hundredths of a penny. The XRP token serves as a bridge asset to facilitate escrow.

      2. WHO ARE RIPPLE’S CUSTOMERS
      Ripple targets financial institutions. Get the banks on board and you will capture retail without the plebs being none the wiser. Ripple has set out to solve a specific problem from the start and has been courting the financial sector as the exclusion of the crypto zealots. Ripple has done testing with the BOE, and many other big banks in Asia and Europe, all to great reviews.

      3. CRYPTO-ANARCHIST-FAGS HATE RIPPLE
      XRP is persona non grata for the basement dwellers because of their business model. Remember, these people want to destroy the banking system and replace it with decentralized crypto. Good luck with that

      4.100-BILLION SUPPLY, PREMINED, DEFLATIONARY TOKEN
      XRP is not a mined token, meaning that there isnt an easy way to acquire and put into the market, driving speculative demand. Also, financial institutions need only hold a base amount of XRP to serve as escrow for any transaction. Want to do a 100,000,000 USD transfer into Rupees? Transaction looks like this

      From US bank: 100,000,000 USD > 400,000,000 XRP > 1 Zillion Ruppees (not looking up exchange rate).
      To US bank: Ruppees > 400,000,000 XRP > 100,000,000 USD

      Both transactions take place at the same time and are validated into escrow prior to trading. All this clears in 1-2 seconds for a fraction of a penny. Beautiful. The problem for speculative holders is that 1. Banks only need hold enough XRP to facilitate their largest transfers. 2. As XRP gains value banks need less XRP.

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      • bsacc

        this was a solid explanation. thanks!

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        • tradercaddy

          I’m glad you understood what he wrote but I’m clueless, although I imagine although the bitcoiners understood.
          Made as much sense to me as reading all of the Medicare Supplement and Advantage plans in the marketplace.
          My eyes just glaze over same.

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          • tradercaddy

            … and whenever I see the word “token” I am reminded of all the pinball games I played instead of going to class in College.

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        • sarcrilege

          yeah, well, except he left out the important part. Concentration. I wouldnt touch something that is so heavily concentrated with one player, Ripple Labs. They pre-mined 100bn XRPs and kept 60% of it. Problem i see: (a) if they cash out, they crush the value accordingly; (b) they make 60% of all fees by virtue of the concentration. So fuck it; not for me!

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          • Good Shepherd

            No one cares about you sac: you are a retard

            Ripple has locked all their tokens into smart contract escrow with a predetermined release schedule. This has been known for months.

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          • sarcrilege

            fake news, bad sheepdog, fake news. Pledging and actually doing it are two different things. And even “if” they did, they “promised” to place a certain “value” of tokens in the escrow, not a certain number of tokens. But how would you know the diff in this scheme, right? Just dont come back here crying that it did not workout for you and now you sleep under the bridge w/ vagrants. Stop being a shill for Ripoff XRP!

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          • Good Shepherd

            https://ripple.com/insights/ripple-escrows-55-billion-xrp-for-supply-predictability/

            You are such an idiot. Next you will call me a commie pinko or some shit.

            They escrowed a specific # of tokens.
            They executed this already.
            Do a basic google search ffs

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          • sarcrilege

            5 days ago is not “known for months”, bad sheep. They did 55 contracts of 1 billion XRP and every contract will expire on the first day of every month and any expiring contract will make the locked up amount for that contract available to the Ripple team to dump on the market. One cool billion per month! In addition to Jed McCaleb, Chris Larsen and Arthur Britto who gave themselves 20bn XRPs early on and are dumping it on weekly basis. In any case, you’re quite the shill for Ripoff.

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        • Good Shepherd

          See this video caddy

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU79HunxJp8&t=2s

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      • bushwacker2

        AMEX is also getting involved with Ripple. Guess what? Other card issuers are about to do the same. It’s called competition. When BAC starts dealing with Ripple, that will probably be the tipping point. On another note, a reliable source has informed me that Amazon has set up a domain called amazonethereum.com. Yeah, that’s right.

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    • pb

      Agreed on ripple/XRP. Their transaction network is of considerable interest.

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  7. og

    The LTC price has doubled even before my Coinbase purchase of it has even cleared. Crazy times.

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  8. roundwego

    China forbidding recycle material from US was the nail in the coffin for globalism.

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-11/warning-worlds-biggest-shipping-line-outlook-world-trade

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