Summary:
- Binance offers a lending product allowing to earn up to 15% per year (annualized)
- A pharmacy chain in Venezuela to begin accepting cryptocurrency payments
- Ripple tests its multi-month lows, it could fall below the pre crypto madness level in late 2017
Crypto lending
Since August 5, when a lot of cryptocurrencies have reached their local highs, major digital currencies have dropped quite noticeably defying, at least to some extent, a notion that they are a way to hedge against rising uncertainty across financial markets. Underperformance of these virtual currencies does not also mean a gloomy newsflow, and in fact, it has been quite a positive week from that point of view. Undoubtedly, a big announcement came from Binance at the start of the week as it informed us about its news service - crypto lending. As per the statement released on Monday, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange has ventured into lending space by offering “Binance lending”, a new service allowing holders of Binance coin token to earn interest on their funds. Along with Binance coin, the new service will also be available for holders of Ethereum classic and Tether. According to the statement, the “binance lending” offer started on August 28 at 6:00 am UTC. How does it work? Binance users could decide on how many tokens they want to lend when a subscription takes place. In exchange for lending they are to be offered “guaranteed” interest after the designated subscription period, according to CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao. He also added that an annualized rate of return could be as high as 15% (Binance coin), while Tether and Ethereum classic are expected to have lower interest - 10% and 7% respectively. In our view, it could make sense at a time when market interest rates keep heading lower while global central banks are looking at even deeper rate reductions irrespective of risks related to these moves.
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Many digital currencies have experienced severe declines so far this week. Source: xStation5
Crypto adoption thrives in Venezuela
Another quite upbeat news came from Venezuela where a prominent pharmacy chain is reportedly going to start accepting cryptocurrency payments. To be precise, the pharmacy chain is to accept payments in Dash. Let us notice that on-site training for pharmacy staff and other related users will be provided during the initial two months - it is to allow them to better understand how the technology actually works in practice and to learn them how to solve their queries regarding Dash payments. Notice that the pharmacy chain serves Venezuelan capital Caracas with its 22 locations. What could also be interesting is the fact that as many as 4900 merchants have already deployed Dash payments around the world, while roughly 50% of them are localized in Venezuela.
Ripple feels the pain
Looking at the Ripple price chart one may notice that the cryptocurrency is currently testing its lowest levels since December 2017, the time right before the crypto madness. Compared Ripple to its major peers it turns out that its performance has been much worse, and again Bitcoin appears to be relatively resilient to the widespread sell-off in the market. Source: xStation5
