Despite being the third most popular cryptocurrency in the world, Ripple , among other top ranking virtual currencies has seen a slump in value and has dropped to just $0.76. The worrying thing about this dip in price is that it comes after the company announced that it hired a new chief market strategist, Cory Johnson. Ripple is worth a huge $49 billion; but thanks to the volatile nature of the virtual currency, it has seen a huge number of peaks and troughs when it comes to the price. Speaking of his move, Johnson said;“The role of Ripple as a company and XRP as a currency in financial markets, to regulators, financial institutions and investors could use more explaining…I’m going to try and explain, listen and set strategies to make it easy for Wall Street and the world of finance to understand what we’re doing.” Despite this drop in price, expert Roman Guelfi-Gibbs believes that 2019 will be the year that Ripple excels, saying; “Ripple certainly has the potential to move up a notch in 2018, but I think it will be more likely in 2019…As the market observes more projects being coded in other algorithms such as XRO, ETH will likely take a backseat to the next big coin/token…It will take some time for the markets to digest this, so I am projecting 2019 to be the likely time for it to take place.” The company’s CEO, Brad Garlinghouse has previously stated that Ripple would comply with the regulators , and work with them in order to progress. He said; “It’s incredibly important that the entire industry recognises that we have to work with the regulators, we have to work with the system…The blockchain revolution is happening from within the system it’s not going to happen from outside the system.” There have even been reports that Ripple is set to get a major cryptocurrency exchange listing, Coinbase, who already offer trading and support for Bitcoin , Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and Ethereum. This listing could help to lift Ripple out of its current price slump.