Creating Cryptocurrency Is Easy – The Problem Is Adding Value

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Creating a cryptocurrency is easy – pick a blockchain start up, type in some code and that’s it, according to US newspaper The Wall Street Journal.

But the hard part is making a cryptocurrency valuable and finding someone who will accept the coin for payment.

That’s why more than 2,000 cryptocurrencies exist and most fail, says the WSJ.

The paper has published a video online documenting the short life of WSJCoin and the problems the cryptocurrency sector faces.

“Whether the industry really needs thousands of these digital currencies has been questioned. This year’s selloff has been harder on the biggest so-called altcoins—alternative versions of bitcoin—than on bitcoin itself,” says WSJ journalist Steven Russolillo.

xRapid bolsters Ripple

Ripple is seeking to expand the reach of the underlying blockchain and the XRP coin by partnering with banks and other financial institutions with a special product targeting cross-border financial transactions.

xRapid speeds up international transactions for financial institutions and cuts the cost of moving money between countries, says a statement from Ripple.

“The traditional international wire experience fails to meet today’s expectations from a price, speed and ease-of-use perspective. Blockchain technology, and specifically Ripple’s xRapid product, resolves all three of these challenges simultaneously,” said Brad Ganey, senior vice president and COO, Catalyst Corporate Federal Credit Union.

Security problems dog exchanges

Investors have lost $1.3 billion in hacks at 31 cryptocurrency exchanges, says new data from research agency ICOrating.

The report pinpoints four reasons allowing the hackers access to exchanges – code errors, poor user account security, inadequate domain and register security and a lack of web protocol security.

Coinbase and Kraken were rated as the most secure exchanges.

“More than 200 crypto-exchanges offer their services and this number is constantly growing. The fall or hacking of the one exchange will not lead to a drop in the market. Still, nobody is fully protected from the loss of their crypto assets. This report covers most pressing issues of 100 selected crypto-exchanges,” says ICOrating.

The price of shares in the only US Bitcoin investment trust, Grayscale Bitcoin, have tumbled almost 80% since Bitcoin peaked at $20,000 in December last year.

Besides the 60% plus drop in value of Bitcoin to around $6,400 since then, high fund fees have also contributed to the fall in value.