Blockchain technology has allowed transactions to be made in an instant. And so far, things are looking good as cryptocurrencies were able to break into people’s consciousness despite the regulatory changes applied by different countries.
And one digital currency that is making waves lately is Ripple. Ripple is currently the number three in the list of cryptocurrencies. It is only behind Bitcoin and Ethereum with a total market cap of $28.7 billion.
Ripple recently launched a new initiative that is called Xpring. It has been aimed to bring entrepreneurs into their ecosystem. What exactly is this project? This project will ultimately be a mixture of investment and grants.
Ripple, has mentioned before that it doesn’t own XRP. However, it owns over 60{4ede17fdd9b4ce8121d01fc4b54913fe84f8215aace504cc657695cefb5329ff} of the existing XRP tokens. XRP has been criticized mainly for its perceived lack of use. And for this reason, Ripple is moving beyond cross-border transactions.
Supporting Businesses
Litecoin has launched a campaign that attracts businesses to accept Litecoin as payment. As for Ripple, things are looking quite similar. Ripple even hired Ethan Beard who is the former director of Facebook’s developer network. He is in charge of leading Xpring and Ripple’s developer program.
According to Ripple’s Senior Vice-President Eric Van Miltenburg, “The goal is to support businesses that we believe would see benefit from building upon the XRP ledger”. He added that “Support will come in a variety of ways: investment, incubation, and the potential of acquisition of grants. We’re focused on proven entrepreneurs who can use the ledger and XRP to really address their customers’ problems”.
Van Milteburg mentioned that Ripple has been approached by businesses in the past but nothing happened mainly because of the focus of Ripple on financial services. He mentioned that “there’s been enough interaction to say there’s something here and now is the time”. He added that “Over the last four to six months (the idea of Xpring) has really crystallized”.
This isn’t a surprising move since CEO Brad Garlinghouse mentioned to TechCrunch in the past that they’d “certainly partner with companies that are looking to use XRP in lots of different ways”.
Is Ripple Really a Good Investment?
So is Ripple really a good investment based on how it seems to provide answers to entrepreneurs similar to how LTC is doing?
Ripple was able to hit its all-time high at $3.30 in January. However, it lost 80{4ede17fdd9b4ce8121d01fc4b54913fe84f8215aace504cc657695cefb5329ff} of its value in just under a 30 days. Is this something that is going to be considered a normal trend for Ripple otherwise known as banker’s coin? And though April was a good month, it doesn’t seem to be significant that it has recovered well.
There is severe resistance at the $1.00 level. However, despite the fact that it is looking bullish lately, sticking to Ripple as a long-term investment can be a concern.
Though it is true that Ripple has been quite active, it is important to take a closer look at mass adoption as a barometer of success for the cryptocurrency. It seems that Ripple is working on Xpring in order for XRP to be used by businesses.
