The Ripple ecosystem is very different from traditional cryptocurrencies. Its approach to modernize and streamline financial operations has received a lot of attention.

Several key developments have taken place recently. Most of them reflect well on Ripple, albeit some may have an impact on the future of XRP as well.

SCB Mobile App

Ripple recently announced a new partnership with Thailand’s Siam Commercial bank. Given Ripple’s presence in Asia already, this is a logical extension of that work. Even Thailand’s oldest bank acknowledges that something needs to change. In this modern age, traditional banking has to evolve.

As part of the partnership, a new mobile application has been created. It will provide a cheaper and faster money transfer solution across borders. The application is built on Ripple’s technology. With money being sent in a minute or less, it provides a very different customer experience.

MoneyGram Transaction Growth

One of Ripple’s partners, MoneyGram, has noted a healthy increase in online transaction growth during the 2019 holiday season. All of the MoneyGram-branded online platforms yielded improvements. A transaction growth of over 70% compared to the same period in 2018 has been recorded.

Although this news doesn’t mention Ripple directly, it creates new opportunities. Most of the online transactions took place on mobile devices. As Ripple is working with institutions on mobile solutions, this can be of great value to MoneyGram as well.

BitBox to Delist XRP

Ripple’s XRP asset is found on virtually all major crypto trading platforms. BitBox has decided to remove this asset, primarily due to low overall trading volume. The company confirms trading pairs between XRP and ETH, BTC, and USDT will be removed come January 16.

While this news is unfortunate, it will have any major impact. Bitbox was never a “big” trading platform for XRP. It is not to be confused with BiBox, a platform contributing plenty of volume every day.

Binance Perpetual Contracts

Whereas BitBox removes XRP trading, Binance takes it one step further. The world’s leading cryptocurrency exchange recently began offering perpetual contract trading with high leverage. XRP was added to this list several days ago.

Interested users can “bet” on the price of XRP/USDT with up to 75x leverage. It is another validation of how appealing the native asset of Ripple is to crypto traders and speculators.

Promising Network Statistics

Information provided by xrp1ntel depicts a healthy Ripple ecosystem. With an average rate of 50.12 transactions per second, the XRP Ledger is performing quite well. There were also over 774,000 payments between December 30, 2019, and January 6, 2020. It is a bit early to find statistics for the current week, but those should become available in a few days.

JP Buntinx JP Buntinx is passionate about cryptocurrencies, fintech, blockchain, and finance. He currently resides in Belgium. See author's posts