Ripple News Update

Ripple (XRP) prices kicked off 2018 in the worst way, losing more than 44% in under a month. The sell-off began as a reaction to trouble on the Korean peninsula. But it was made worse by a Bloomberg Businessweek report, which said that Ripple’s corporate partners had no interest in XRP.

Now, however, the dust is settling.

Volatility is easing. Markets are returning to normal. And Ripple is starting to play offense rather than defense.

CEO Brad Garlinghouse took the fight straight to XRP skeptics, beating back the idea that Ripple’s partners will never use its cryptocurrency. He likened their shortsightedness to the 1990s, when AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) CEO Randal Stevens said that “AT&T will never use IP.”




But Garlinghouse came armed with more than words. He brought proof in the form of three new partnerships for Ripple. All three will use XRP in their businesses. (Source: “More Global Payment Providers, IDT and MercuryFX, Sign Up to Use XRP,” Ripple, January 24, 2018.)

We already heard of the partnership with Moneygram International Inc (NASDAQ: MGI), a company that helps ex-pats send money back to their country of origin. It is valued at $700.0 million and has 350,000 locations around the world.

But the other two, MercuryFX and IDT Corporation (NYSE: IDT), were bombshells. Having locked up three of the top five cross-border financial services, Ripple looks like it’s finally making inroads with XRP. As a result, a greater amount of transaction volume will be attributed to real business applications.

Ripple (XRP) Price Chart

“I imagine we will be able to begin using XRP for customer payments in the coming months,” the founder and director of Mercury FX, Alastair Constance, told CoinDesk. (Source: “In Their Own Words: Real Companies Talk Ripple XRP Pilots,” CoinDesk, January 29, 2018.)

“As with all things, we will start with more modest sums in the thousands of dollars and increase by orders of magnitude from there. Come to the end of the pilot we will not be surprised if XRP is carrying single transactions across the blockchain of a million dollars or more,” Constance added.

Typically, Ripple’s partners have opted to use its technology, but not its cryptocurrency. This is done using “xCurrent.” However, the new partnerships with Moneygram, IDT, and MercuryFX involve “xRapid”—a software that incorporates XRP.

Ripple’s top brass promised this was coming down the pipeline, but clearly, investors didn’t believe them. That’s why the XRP to USD exchange rate is stuck at $1.28.

Analyst Take

Given the sudden uptake in adoption—and the lack of movement in prices—XRP looks like it’s trading at a spectacular discount. As such, we maintain our $10.00 Ripple price prediction for 2018.