Ripple Raised $200 Million with a Capitalization of $10 Billion

December 20, 2019, by Marko Vidrih on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE

Ripple, an American blockchain startup, closed its $200 million Series C funding round, with its market valuation exceeding $10 billion, Fortune reports. The investment round was led by the financial group Tetragon. Also, SBI and Route 66 Ventures took part in it.

Ripple intends to use the received funding to attract banks and money transfer companies to use XRP cryptocurrency in international transactions.

Ripple CEO, Brad Garlinghouse said that his company currently serves more than 300 customers. He hopes that the Ripple customer base will grow by 30–40% in 2020, and the volume of transactions in the company’s network will increase by 600%.

Garlinghouse noted that XRP helps customers free up the capital they may need at the moment and avoid having to lock them into accounts with local banks. According to him, the payment company Moneygram uses XRP to make 15% of transfers to Mexico. He also observes significant volumes of transactions with the Australian dollar, the Philippine peso and the Brazilian real.

Commenting on the last investment round, Garlinghouse noted the high level of investor interest in Ripple, stressing that the company did not need financing, but it would allow it to be more flexible in its decisions.

He declined to disclose information about Ripple’s business profitability but stated that promoting XRP is part of the company’s core strategy.

“While XRP may be more efficient than traditional methods (like wire transfers) of moving money across borders, skeptics question whether there will be a role for Ripple in the future,” Fortune writes.

Garlinghouse said he was not worried about the possibility of losing market share due to the upcoming launch of the Chinese national digital currency, as the central bank experiment is aimed at moving money inside the country, not across the border. He also doubted that banks and private firms would accept the stablecoin Libra, developed by one of their competitors.

“Historically, the number of times governments or big companies have been able to come together and execute something on this scale is rare,” he explained. “Bank of America or Citi is not going to use a JP Morgan coin.”

Author: Marko Vidrih