Getting adopted is a crucial part of a cryptocurrency’s success. Until now, a cryptocurrency that is widely used by people and businesses is still up for grabs.
For Ripple, their focus is to cater cheaper cross-border transactions to banks and other businesses. And for this reason, they’ve come up with different products and partnered with banks and companies such as Western Union and MoneyGram.
Ripple had some rough months prior to the past week. When Ripple announced that they are having xRapid, Ripple was able to outrank Ethereum in the list of the biggest cryptocurrencies. This time around, xRapid is going live. It is going to be used for the first time by three financial institutions.
Ripple’s xRapid is said to be the bridge between cryptocurrencies and currencies. How exactly does it work? With the use of xRapid, XRP is going to be sent in order to be converted to another currency. This aims to carry out international transactions in just “a matter of minutes”.
xRapid Now Available
This will be used by Mercury FX, Catalyst Corporate Federal Credit Union, and Cuallix. Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple’s chief executive is set to announce the news at the annual Swell conference. This is a two-day event that is going to be attended by the likes of Bill Clinton. According to Asheesh Birla, Ripple’s senior vice president of product, “I’m really excited to bring the product into the market at a time when there is a lot of skepticism about digital assets and their real use case”.
Birla added that “Here’s something where we’re finding a ton of value and providing a ton of value to our customers using digital assets to move money more efficiently”.
Will This Be Successful?
Ripple has attempted to partner with different banks and companies in the past to promote their ability to reduce the cost of cross-border transactions. Unfortunately, Western Union’s chief executive Hikmet Ersek mentioned that after testing Ripple’s product, it hasn’t helped them lessen the cost of cross-border transactions. According to the executive, “The practical matter is it’s still too expensive”. However, the Western Union executive mentioned that the sample is “too small”. However, Ersek isn’t exactly giving up on blockchain to resolve the problem.
Aside from the effectiveness of Ripple’s product, another issue that Ripple faced are the lawsuits. Ripple is a private company that owns around 60% of XRP tokens. According to the lawsuits received by Ripple labs, the claim is that XRP is a security.
Since then, Ripple made an effort to “decentralize” XRP. Ripple has hired people who can help them. In addition to this, you also have the effort of Ripple to be recognized in the mainstream. Ashton Kutcher even promoted Ripple by going to Ellen DeGeneres.
Mass adoption is something that is left to be seen in the crypto niche. Volatility, scalability, and security are just some of the things that make it a tricky scenario for cryptocurrencies. Even Vitalik Buterin commented that people are paying too much attention on having a Bitcoin ETF when they should be focused on mass adoption.
