Until this morning, few people knew that Ripple would host a private summit of central bank officials at Carnegie Hall in New York City. It’s hard to believe Ripple news of that magnitude can fly beneath the radar, but that’s what happened.

If you believe that blockchain technology means the end of traditional banking (as many cryptocurrency fanatics do), then this news is meaningless.

Who cares if Ripple wins the trust of central banks? They’re toast anyways.

However, if you don’t believe the global financial system will melt away before Bitcoin and Ethereum, then this news is potentially life-changing. It means that Ripple is being taken seriously by the highest monetary authorities.

Just to put that in perspective, Bitcoin prices shot to the moon when CME Group Inc (NASDAQ:CME) announced that it would add a Bitcoin futures contract to its derivatives market.


Investors were ecstatic to hear that BTC futures would trade right beside gold and crude oil futures. The credibility was intoxicating. And that was just a private derivatives market (albeit the biggest one in the world).

Imagine the bullish rally Ripple could experience from central bank authorization.

“The Summit provided an opportunity to explore the full payments landscape: central banks’ domestic trials, Ripple’s growing cross-border network and interoperability across systems,” said Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse.

“Together, these form the beginning of an Internet of Value, where payments move as easily as the data across the internet.” (Source: “Ripple Hosts World’s Central Banks to Explore Next Generation of Payments,” Ripple, November 13, 2017.)

That’s the scale of legitimacy investors need to consider, because Ripple is not trying to burn down the existing financial system. It is looking to sell to them.

It’s possible that markets started to absorb the news on Tuesday morning, because the Ripple to USD exchange rate increased 2.63% to $0.207862. At the same time, the Ripple to Bitcoin rate jumped 2.24% to 0.00003163 BTC.

Daily Ripple Chart

Analyst Take:

We continue to believe that XRP has enormous upside potential. Its continuous growth in credibility, expanding footprint in China, and lockup of 55 billion XRP tokens makes it truly special. We heartily maintain our $2.00 Ripple price prediction for 2018.

Also Read: Ripple Price Predictions 2017: XRP Price Could Cross $1 Mark by End of Year