The third most valuable crypto by market value, XRP has become the favourite of institutional investors lately, hinting that there may be more than meets the eyes.

Data, however, retrieved from Whale Alert revealed a large entity moved 119,999,980 XRP (75,551,782 USD) from an unknown wallet to Coinbase, a few hours ago.

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🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 119,999,980 #XRP (75,551,782 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to #Coinbase

Tx: https://t.co/jLvBuVXElJ

— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) December 3, 2020

• Wealthy crypto investors seem to be upping their game last quarter of, 2020, as regards moving XRP – the third most valuable crypto by market value, as lately seen by Nairametrics.
• Many crypto experts anticipate the movements of such crypto are coming from major stakeholders of Ripple, on the bias some of these wallets contain a significant amount of XRP.

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At the time of writing, XRP was trading at $0.628191 with a daily volume of $11 billion. XRP is up 1.16% in the last 24 hours, with a market capitalization of $28.5 billion. It has a circulating supply of 45,334,295,892 XRP coins and a maximum supply of 100,000,000,000 XRP coins.

What you should know: Ripple is a privately-held fintech company that provides a global payment solution via its patented payment network called Ripple Network (also known as RippleNet).

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XRP still remains the only crypto gaining traction among global banks as Japan-based Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, with assets of more than USD 2.8 trillion, announced in November 2018 that, in cooperation with Ripple, it would provide an international money transfer service on the payment corridor from Japan to Brazil

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Why are whales buying?

Economic historian, Barry Eichengreen, gave a detailed analysis of why cryptos should not just be considered for speculative reasons, as leading crypto assets have shown characteristics of being tangible assets.

“I don’t think that thinking about crypto as speculative investments, is really a long-term viable business model. Speculative investments have come and gone throughout history. Tulips came as a speculative investment and they went. Digital assets that provide actual tangible services like cross-border payments are the ones that are likely to have legs,” Eichengreen said.

READ: Ripple suffers highest day percentage loss since September 3

Barry went on to explain why crypto has become the new digital gold.

He said, “Gold doesn’t really have any intrinsic value. People [believe] it will hold its value because other people value it. There is, from that point-of-view, a parallel with cryptocurrencies. People pay actual U.S. dollars for it because they think other people will value it and pay actual U.S. dollars for it.”

READ: Whales are buying XRP, Ripple becomes world’s 3rd most valuable crypto

Explore Research Grade Data on the Nairametrics Research Website

European Central Bank (ECB) leader, Christine Lagarde, is leading the campaign for a digital euro but doesn’t see the flagship crypto, Bitcoin, and other cryptos as ideal for payment.

The ECB leader acknowledged the gains of having blockchain technology in play, but was critical about Bitcoin and other cryptos, particularly on the bias that it’s too volatile to be used in making payments.

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“The main risk lies in relying purely on technology and the flawed concept of there being no identifiable issuer or claim. This also means that users cannot rely on crypto-assets maintaining a stable value: they are highly volatile, illiquid, speculative, and so do not fulfill all the functions of money,” Lagarde said.

In this COVID-19 era, Lagarde has declared her support for the digitalization of the Euro, elaborating deeper on what a digital euro could do, such as providing its citizens unrestricted access to money that is backed by a central bank, and allowing the Euro geopolitical area to maintain its monetary status quo.

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“It could be important in a range of future scenarios, from a decline in the use of cash to pre-empting the uptake of foreign digital currencies in the euro area. Issuing a digital euro might become necessary to ensure both continued access to central bank money and monetary sovereignty.

“A properly designed digital euro would create synergies with the payments industry and enable the private sector to build new businesses based on digital euro-related services,” Lagarde added.

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What you should know

• Some weeks back, Christine Lagarde gave a strong indication that the ECB could create its cryptocurrency within a few years, in what would be a systematical change to the euro zone’s financial system.
• Lagarde hinted that it could take two to four years before the project begins, as it would address concerns over privacy, money laundering, and the technology involved.

READ: U.S investment giant, with $295 billion assets plans to buy Bitcoin

BlackRock CEO and leader of the world’s biggest asset management firm, Larry Fink, recently revealed that the flagship crypto is on his company’s radar amid the rapid gains recorded by Bitcoin this year alone.

Speaking recently at the Council on Foreign Relations alongside Mark Carney, former Governor of the Bank of England, Fink said, “Bitcoin has caught the attention and the imagination of many people. Still untested, pretty small relative to other markets.”

READ: List of cryptos U.S investment banks are buying quietly

“Can it evolve into a global market? Possibly,” Fink added.

What you should know

• BlackRock is the world’s biggest asset manager with about $7.4 trillion in assets under management as of the end of Q4 2019.
• Its massive size allows it to do what no other asset management on planet earth can do.

READ: List of Cryptos rich individuals are investing in

Recall a few weeks ago, BlackRock top executive, Rick Rieder, gave reasons for his bias towards Bitcoin overtaking gold as the go-to store-of-wealth asset.

“Do I think it will take the place of gold to a large extent? Yeah, I do, because it’s so much more functional than passing a bar of gold around,” Rieder said.

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Also, the BlackRock CIO of Fixed Income buttressed his bias on why Cryptos are here to stay, taking into account its role in payments among the world’s millennials:

“I think cryptocurrency is here to stay and I think it is durable and you’ve seen the central banks that have talked about digital currencies. I think digital currency and the receptivity, particularly millennials’ receptivity to technology and cryptocurrency is real. Digital payments systems are real, so I think Bitcoin is here to stay.”

READ: Africa’s internet economy has the potential to reach 5.2% of the continent’s GDP by 2025 – Goggle/IFC

However, the leading asset manager, BlackRock, doesn’t outrightly own any crypto yet. It is indirectly exposed to digital assets through MicroStrategy, a business intelligence company that has most of its savings in Bitcoin.

The world’s largest asset manager is the largest MicroStrategy shareholder, with a 15.2% stake in the firm.