The top daily news from the cryptocurrency and blockchain space:

  • Ripple invests $30 million in Money Gram.
  • South Korean exchanges (finally) revise terms and conditions in win for users.
  • Binance’s Changpeng Zhao holds hour-long AMA.

At the time of writing, bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) are trading at $9,181.2 (+0.4%) and $269.0 (-0.1%), respectively. As for the MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 10 Index, it is currently tracking at 4,314.1 (-1.6%).

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Ripple Invests $30 Million in Money Transfer Giant, MoneyGram

Blockchain technology startup Ripple announced its investment into, and partnership with, MoneyGram, the world’s second largest global remittance company. In a blog post, Ripple explained the partnership will focus on the XRP-reliant xRapid, its solution for “on-demand liquidity, which reduces reliance on pre-funding by enabling money to be sent from one currency and instantly settled in the destination currency.”

Appearing Monday on Bloomberg TV, Ripple chief executive Brad Garlinghouse answered host Emily Chang’s question regarding how much equity Ripple gets from the MoneyGram deal by stating the following:

“What we committed to do is to invest up to fifty million dollars. We’ll end up owning somewhere between about six or seven percent and ten percent of the company. [MoneyGram] decide, over the course of the next year, how much of that fifty million they want to call down. At close, they’ve called down thirty million at a price of four dollars and ten cents per share.”

MoneyGram’s NASDAQ-listed stock spiked by over 150 percent from Monday’s market-close value of $1.49.

Win for Crypto Investors as Korean Exchanges Guarantee Hack Reimbursements

A handful of South Korean crypto exchanges have updated their respective terms and conditions so as to accept liability for potential hacks and service issues. Per local news site Yonhap, the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) – South Korea’s regulatory authority for economic competition – confirmed five crypto exchanges made the revisions; long-awaited acknowledgement of a corrective recommendation issued by the KFTC in April 2018.

Notably, among the five exchanges was Bithumb, a crypto trading platform that has managed to remain popular despite having suffered a number of costly hacks over the past year. Previously, in order to receive reimbursement, users had the burden of proving faults in any of these five exchanges’ systems. Now, these exchanges will hold themselves accountable in the event of an incident wherein user funds are stolen.

Binance’s CZ Holds AMA

Binance chief executive and co-founder Changpeng Zhao – commonly referred to as ‘CZ’ – conducted his latest Periscope ask-me-anything (AMA) video livestream on Periscope at 3:00am (UTC) Monday.

On the livestream – which had a peak viewership of 3,000 – CZ covered many aspects of the fast-growing Binance behemoth. These included its upcoming margin trading product, Binance US, upcoming initial exchange offerings (IEOs), Binance DEX, and much more.