Ripple has been targeting institutional investors lately. Ripple products today have been known for its potential to be used by banks and by businesses. This has been the primary focus of Ripple from the start.
In fact, after the anticipated release of xRapid, Ripple was able to overtake Ethereum in the list of top ten cryptocurrencies. And recently, it has been recorded that Ripple’s revenue from the sale of XRP doubled in the past quarter compared to the second quarter of 2018.
According to reports, Ripple sold $163.33 million worth of XRP in the third quarter of the year compared to just $75.53 million during the second quarter of 2018. According to its numbers, most came from institutional direct sales. Ripple subsidiary XRP II was able to sell $98.06 million in contrast to just $16.87 million in the prior quarter. However, despite the improvement Ripple is yet to match its first-quarter sales of $167.7 million.
It has been reported as well that Ripple released 3 billion XRP from its escrow accounts in the last quarter. However, there were also 2.6 billion tokens that were placed in a new escrow account. As for the remaining 400 million XRP tokens that are left, these are “being used in a variety of ways to help support the XRP ecosystem”.
A Short Rally in September
The price of XRP declined a bit after it has dealt with multiple lawsuits that claim XRP to be a security. There were a number of class action suits that Ripple has been dealing with. And perhaps this is the reason why the US Securities and Exchange Commission may have refused to include XRP in the list of cryptos that it has considered as commodities. According to the agency’s past statement, it was Bitcoin and Ethereum that were considered as commodities.
There are already three companies that are looking to try xRapid. According to Ripple, xRapid is the bridge between digital currency and fiat currency. By the end of September, Ripple had a rally.
And also, there’s Coil testing its “web monetization product with more than 200 websites enabling XRP payments”.
Wall Street Adoption?
Another reason for the rise of Ripple is the participation of institutional investors in the crypto market. It is no secret that many are expecting the entry of institutional investors in the niche at this point now that the market is bearish. And Ripple is no different.
Ripple has mentioned that big institutions are coming to the crypto market. The announcement said that “Big institutional firms continue moving towards backing crypto trading, but have to launch offerings into the market”. In addition to this, the announcement added that it “has allowed emerging companies to build a handful of large businesses trading digital assets—traditional Wall Street firms are waiting in the wings”.
Will there be more institutional investors teaming up with Ripple in the future? Banks have partnered with Ripple in order to solve their cross-border transactions. And not only that, the likes of Western Union also partnered with Ripple. However, there was a report wherein Ripple’s product wasn’t actually decreasing the cost of cross-border transactions.
