Ripple’s Yearly Report - From dumping FUD to being valued at $10 billion
Very few companies survived the aftermath of the ICO hype, Ripple is one such company that was inspired by ideologies of Bitcoin and built to make cryptocurrencies better, faster, and more secure. Although the narrative around Ripple and XRP has changed over the years, both have done more than just survive: they have flourished.
As the year comes close to an end, Ripple raised $200 million in Series C round reportedly valuing it at a whopping $10 billion. This article takes a peek into the past year to gauge Ripple’s achievements and developments.
Unlike others, Ripple identifies itself as a payments company rather than a cryptocurrency company. Rightfully so, as they are aiming towards revolutionizing the payments sector using blockchain and cryptocurrency. In the payments field, Ripple has a major advantage due to its early start and is also making sure to lead by example.
Ripple’s xCurrent, xRapid, and xVia: Each of these has a role to play in reducing the inefficiencies and can be integrated into Ripple’s network, called the “RippleNet”.
Ripple has partnered with over 350 partners in 2019. In Q1 of 2019, Ripple entered partnerships with 13 major institutions, Euro Exim Bank, SendFriend, JNFX, FTCS, Ahli Bank of Kuwait, Transpaygo, and others. Five [JNFX, SendFriend, Transpaygo, FTCS, and Euro Exim Bank] of the above partners have announced the use of XRP to provide liquidity.
In Q2 of 2019, xRapid usage shot by 170%; additionally, a 30% increase in xRapid partners was also witnessed. This was mainly due to Ripple’s partnership with MoneyGram in June 2019, one of the top 5 financial service providers,
xRapid works by leveraging XRP to provide on-demand liquidity. It was also reported that Ripple’s ODL was responsible for the transfer of 10% of Mexican foreign exchange trading. On November 25, Ripple completed the $50 million investment commitment by giving investing the remaining$20 million in MoneyGram.
However, Ripple reported that the ODL usage shot up by 75% from Q2 to Q3 and the dollar volume of ODL increased by more than 5 times in the same time period. In addition, Ripple announced its acquisition of team Algrim to support the ongoing development of ODL.
Speaking with AMBCrypto, an XRP enthusiast with a screen name “XRP Scan” stated:
“In 2020 I expect many more [ODL] corridors would open up and the existing ones would continue seeing ever higher amounts of fund flow. Bridging 2 local, non-USD currencies in under 3 seconds is the killer feature that has potential to take huge business away from traditional players in many of these inefficient corridors. As Ripple on-boards new exchanges and speeds up payments within inefficient corridors, I expect the network to touch new heights, both in terms of transactions and value transferred.”
The most important development in terms of adoption of cryptocurrencies took place by Ripple’s investing arm Xpring. It invested in projects like Forte, Kava Labs, Bolt Labs, Agoric, etc., all of which are trying to develop new and efficient methods to address different inefficiencies in blockchain.