Here’s Why Ripple Is Dumping One-Third Of Its Stake In MoneyGram

By Brenda Ngari – November 28, 2020

Blockchain-based payment firm Ripple is selling a third of its position in MoneyGram, the remittance giant that provides liquidity to its XRP settlement service, according to details of a new filing. This represents the very first sale of MoneyGram’s stake since the two companies entered into a strategic partnership last year.

Per a filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Nov.27, Ripple currently owns 6.22 million shares of MoneyGram or 8.6% of shares outstanding. The fintech firm also has a warrant to purchase another 5.95 million shares for an equity position that amounts to 12.2 million shares (equivalent to 17% of MoneyGram’s shares outstanding).

Ripple informed the SEC that it is now selling roughly 4 million MoneyGram shares. This is 33.3% of its entire stake in the remittance company if you include the shares represented by the warrant.

Why The Sell-Off?

When Ripple invested an initial $30 million into MoneyGram in June last year, the firm acquired a stake in MoneyGram. Upon entering the partnership, MoneyGram agreed to use Ripple’s xRapid product (now known as the On-Demand Liquidity) and also the XRP cryptocurrency to facilitate cross-border payments.

In exchange, Ripple purchased MoneyGram shares at an average purchase price of $4.10 apiece — a massive premium at the prices then. Fortunately, MoneyGram shares have surged by over 250% this year and closed at around $7.41 on November 25. This means that Ripple has raked in millions of dollars from its MoneyGram investment.

According to a spokesman for Ripple, the sales — which are still ongoing —  are “purely a judicial decision to realize some gains” on the firm’s investment in MoneyGram and are not necessarily indicative of the present state of the partnership between the two companies.

When the sale is concluded, Ripple will still own 3.22 million shares — or 4.44% of MoneyGram. If you count the shares represented by the warrant, Ripple will still own at least 11% of the payments processor.

Ripple completed the promised $50 million investment in MoneyGram with an additional $30 million in November 2019. MoneyGram uses Ripple’s tech to facilitate cross-border transfers in at least four countries. The Texas-based firm has also received payments of over $52 million from Ripple for providing liquidity to Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity network.

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DISCLAIMER

The views expressed in the article are wholly those of the author and do not represent those of, nor should they be attributed to, ZyCrypto. This article is not meant to give financial advice. Please carry out your own research before investing in any of the various cryptocurrencies available.

The original article written by Brenda Ngari and posted on ZyCrypto.com.

Article reposted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

Ripple's XRP On The Verge Of Something Big As Number of Whales Reach Astronomical Levels

By Ponvang Bulus – October 31, 2020

Despite XRP's seemingly weak performance in the market, data from the crypto information platform Santiment reveals that the number of XRP whales is on the rise. The number has increased in the last six months with the number of whales holding 100,000 to 10,000,000 XRP seeing an astronomical rise.

Those holding 100 thousand to 1 million increased by 19.7% from 14,525 to 17,387 whales. This is the category of whales that recorded the highest increase. Those holding 10 million or more XRP increased by 10.4% from 280 to 309 while those holding 1 million to 10 million coins recorded the least increase of 2.2% from 1,307 to 1,336 whales.

(Click image for larger view)

Investors still have confidence despite poor price performance

Since XRP reached its all-time high of $3.53 in January 2018, it has dropped continuously to the current price of $0.247. This is in spite of other altcoins posting huge growth such as LINK which has been one of the best performing cryptocurrencies this year. Because of the stagnated growth, Tether (USDT) also replaced it as the 3rd largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

The increasing number of whales holding the cryptocurrency however is a sign that investors still believe there is a bright future for XRP. The XRP community also known as the XRP army is one of the strongest cryptocurrency communities in the space and they have held on for a long time, believing that the cryptocurrency will increase in price to $589. Though they have been fiercely criticized for this optimism, it may not be all crazy as the mass adoption of a cryptocurrency is an important driver of price action. As more whales continue to accumulate, the price may eventually follow, but it is not certain when this may happen.

Market update

The market experienced a pullback yesterday with Bitcoin retracing towards $13,000. However, it has bounced back and XRP is not left behind. It has gained 2.84% in the last 24 hours and my gain even more as the market continues to boom.

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DISCLAIMER

The views expressed in the article are wholly those of the author and do not represent those of, nor should they be attributed to, ZyCrypto. This article is not meant to give financial advice. Please carry out your own research before investing in any of the various cryptocurrencies available.

The original article written by Ponvang Bulus and posted on ZyCrypto.com.

Article reposted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

Adding to Bullish XRP Narrative, Ripple Bagged This Key Partnership

Over the past few days, XRP has exploded dozens of percent higher, reaching nearly $0.30 just today. The surge has been attributed to a confluence of technical and fundamental developments, including increases in the price of Bitcoin, the launch of an XRP investment vehicle by leading derivatives exchange BitMEX, and much more. XRP’s bullish narrative gained even more steam recently with news that Ripple Labs, the San Francisco-based fintech company that is often closely affiliated with the cryptocurrency, just bagged a key partnership, increasing XRP’s adoption.

Ripple Secures Key Partnership

According to a recent post from Ripple on Tuesday, the company has just partnered with International Money Express (also known as Intermex), which is a leading money remittance and financial services company listed on the NASDAQ under the ticker IMXI.

This partnership will see Intermex, which operates primarily in Latin America, use Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) product for “faster, transparent cross-border remittance services between the United States and Mexico.” ODL is one of the flagship products of Ripple’s RippleNet, which does the following:

[ODL] relies on the digital asset XRP as real-time bridge between the sending and receiving currencies to enable even faster and cheaper cross-border transactions.

ODL is also being used by goLance, Viamericas, FlashFX, amongst other international payment companies.

Ripple wrote that Intermex integrating ODL is extremely important because the remittance firm is “one of the largest U.S. to Mexico remitter service providers in the world—processing more than 30 million payment transactions a year through a network of 100,000 payer locations.”

Intermex agrees with this sentiment. Company CEO Bob Lisy said the following on this partnership:

We are pleased to have begun the partnership with the Ripple team, and look forward to implementing new solutions on RippleNet and ODL to help drive growth and deliver greater efficiency.

This is Ripple’s latest partnership in a line of many.

Per previous reports from Ethereum World News, Ripple partnered with Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), one of Thailand’s oldest banks at over 100 years old, to “change the lives of their over 16 million customers.” This partnership will see the two entities create SCB Easy, a “mobile application that runs on Ripple to deliver instant, low-cost cross-border payments.”

The SCB intends to expand its operations into Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam—collectively known as the CLMV countries — in 2020, potentially increasing the reach of this new application.

Original article posted on the EthereumWorldNews.com site, by Nick Chong.

Article re-posted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

How Swell for XRP: Ripple Reveals it Has Above 300 Customers

How swell for XRP. According to a recent report from Forbes, Ripple Labs has just crossed a key milestone, accentuating that the firm’s fintech projects continue to gain traction, despite the downturn in the cryptocurrency and blockchain market.

Ripple Continues to Gain Traction

Announced in an official blog post published on Wednesday prior to its Swell conference in Singapore, Ripple has claimed to have surpassed 300 customers, which consists of a “global network of banks, financial institutions and payment providers that sends money globally, instantly and reliably for fractions of a penny.” Indeed, the post elaborated that Ripple has customers “in more than 45 countries and 6 continents using RippleNet, with payout capabilities in 70+ countries.”

Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity product, which is also known as xRapid, has also seen growing level adoptions. This comes in spite of the fact that ODL was just announced at 2018’s iteration of Swell.

“In less than a year since the commercialization of ODL, we have seen tremendous growth and customer interest with two dozen customers signed on to use the product.

Some of the notable customers committed to using ODL include MoneyGram, goLance, Viamericas, FlashFX and Interbank Peru. There have been more than 7x the number of transactions using ODL from the end of Q1 to the end of October,” Ripple wrote, confirming that its products are truly gaining steam.

For some context, ODL is a product that leverages XRP as a bridge currency to “eliminate the need for pre-funding in cross border payments.” Ripple’s chief executive Brad Garlinghouse has previously stated that MoneyGram’s use of ODL is a clear sign that the cryptocurrency is beneficial. MoneyGram, according to Garlinghouse, is currently “experiencing real-time [transaction] settlement (around 60 seconds) in U.S. dollars to Mexican pesos” through the solution.

XRP Readies to Push Higher

This positive development for Ripple comes as XRP has purportedly begun to build price strength.

Per previous reports from Ethereum World News, Peter Brandt, a long-time commodities trader with years in the business, recently remarked that the cryptocurrency’s latest move to the upside has only corroborated one of his bullish analyses of the XRP chart. Referring to the chart below, he remarked that this “chart interpretation remains valid — it is taking another run at a breakout.”

Original article posted on the EthereumWorldNews.com site, by Nick Chong.

Article re-posted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe