On Tuesday, Ripple announced that it had reached an important milestone: 100 financial institutions on its enterprise blockchain. (Source: “Ripple’s Blockchain Network Is Now More Than 100 Strong,” Ripple, October 10, 2017.)

Investors celebrated this Ripple news by sending prices up 2.66% against Bitcoin.

However, it should be noted that the Ripple to USD exchange rate only advanced 1.87% to $0.262645. This suggests that existing crypto investors are more excited than those sitting on fiat currency. But even crypto enthusiasts are missing the big picture…




Ripple announced this milestone a week before its first ever conference. Why would they do that? Didn’t their CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, hint that there will be a big announcement at the conference? Why would he front-run his own news cycle?

The answer is obvious: He didn’t.

Garlinghouse runs a pretty slick operation, meaning that his team is unlikely to commit a PR blunder on this scale. What’s far more likely is that next week’s announcement is so big, so MASSIVE, that it dwarfs this announcement by comparison.

Outside of that X-factor, there are plenty of other tailwinds for Ripple. For instance, its commercial usage is picking up dramatically.

One Swedish bank already processed $180.0 million’s worth of payments on the network. Meanwhile, Thai emigrants are sending remittances back home via Ripple. And a Thai bank is using the blockchain to make corporate payments for one of its major clients.

The success of these cases could potentially attract more financial institutions to Ripple.

Moreover, the strategic approach of Ripple—to work with financial institutions, rather than against them—makes it less likely to face a regulatory challenge. To put it another way, short of an outright ban, XRP is likely to grow faster than Bitcoin, Litecoin, or Ethereum.

Analyst Take:

We still believe our Ripple price prediction ($2.00 by 2018) is reasonable, if not entirely conservative. The strength of its current momentum, in fact, is strong enough to carry the price to $0.40 by month’s end. Wouldn’t that be a sight for sore eyes?

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