Exactly two years ago, Ripple Labs Inc (as it was known then), partnered with SBI Holdings of Japan to form SBI Ripple Asia Co. In the press release that was issued on the SBI Holdings website, the partnership with Ripple (XRP) was geared towards achieving the following:

Form the new entity, SBI Ripple Asia Co. Ltd

To promote currency and financial system innovation on the blockchain

Conduct business development in Japan and Asia

Provide a settlement platform utilizing blockchain technology in Japan and the entire Asia Region

SBI Ripple Asia has since provided the next-generation payment platform powered by DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) to financial institutions and remittance transfer providers in Asia. SBI Ripple Asia is also the secretariat of a consortium of domestic and foreign currency exchanges which number 61 as of July 2017. This consortium (Japan Bank Consortium) is building and commercializing RC Cloud – the world’s first and Japan-originated new payment platform which unifies domestic and foreign exchange using Ripple’s solution. With this platform, seamless settlements and payments are expected with banks and beyond.

It is with such goals of SBI Ripple Asia that are slowly coming to light, that the CEO of SBI Holdings, Yoshitaka Kitao has been quoted numerous times predicting that we shall see a $10 XRP by the end of the year.

SBI Holdings also aims at launching a cryptocurrency exchange this summer that will have XRP as the center of trading. One can only imagine that XRP will be the base for trading pairs as was recently announced by the Zebpay exchange. Zebpay now has TRX/XRP trading available.

Both Zebpay and the anticipated SBI Holdings Virtual Currencies exchange, will add to the liquidity of XRP in the markets by increasing the availability of the coin. Mr. Kitao believes that XRP will become the global standard in digital currencies.

Current market analysis indicate a slight increase in the total market capitalization from $370 Billion that was seen yesterday, to current levels of $382 Billion. With respect to XRP, the coin is currently trading at $0.687 at the moment of writing this and up 2.79% in 24 hours.

[Photo source, xrpworld.com]