Cryptocurrencies have been at the helm of debates among financial circles across the globe. Throughout the year, speculations for a bull market emerged at every nook and corner, but that wasn’t to be, unfortunately. Bitcoin (BTC) had a bull run for a few months but kept declining for most of 2019, a trend that remained in stark contrast of what the crypto pundits predicted.
In the middle of all this, one of the major debates that gripped the world was a fundamental question: Is crypto an investment asset or a usable currency?
Fortunately, the markets strongly indicated that crypto could seriously be used as a legit exchange for trade. Thousands of use cases emerged that added strength to the argument in favor of crypto as a currency and the fact that elite influencers like John McAfee emphasized the utility aspect helped the case even further. Therefore, last year we saw the emergence of several utility tokens, and Ripple (XRP) was on the front.
Ripple, in fact, has been one of the most understated crypto projects, though the progress it showed in 2019 has been nothing short of spectacular. Following are a few highlights for Ripple, which made it arguably the best performing altcoin of 2019:
Ripple News: Global Financial Institutions Adopt Ripple
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Ripple (XRP) has had a fantastic year in terms of adoption, as major banking and other financial institutions across the globe embraced the project for various operational tasks. Right from the beginning of the year, Ripple kept bring new financial institutions on board and continued to do so throughout 2019. Currently, the Ripple project caters to more than 200 financial institutions all over the world.
Expansion in New Markets
For any company to be successful in the long term, it needs to have a global presence spread across various regions instead of ultra-concentration on a single territory. In this regard, Ripple had a fairly successful year as it spread its wings in the Middle East, a region that has shown immense potential for crypto businesses. Likewise, the company launched a new office in Brazil in June, intending to expand its presence in Latin America. Ripple was praised even in regions hostile to crypto, like India, as banks from the sub-continent acknowledge the prowess of Ripple’s cross border payment networks.
Ripple (XRP) Partnership with Giants of the Financial Game
No matter how much the traditionalists argue against it, crypto has become an inevitable part of the global financial system, and to survive and thrive in it, crypto companies need to partner with the established names, at least at an initial stage. Ripple has been quite successful at this, especially in 2019, as major players of the game embraced its technology. Some of the biggest names like Bank of America, SBI Japan, Santander, TPBank, and MoneyGram. This has given Ripple a big edge over competitors like TRON, Stellar, SWIFT, etc.
Partnering with Reputed Names Globally
In early 2019, Ripple partnered with Tata Consultancy Services, one of the world’s leading IT solutions providers, headquartered in India. TCS is an established supplier of digital services to the banking sector and has a humongous user base of over a mammoth one billion globally. Similarly, one of the most elite circles of intellectuals and academicians, the Oxford Foundry joined Ripple’s UBRI (University Blockchain Research Initiative) for working on a new tech series aimed at blockchain learning. There’s also a word doing rounds indicating that various government departments in several countries are ready to adopt Ripple’s blockchain solutions, and if this sees the day, Ripple could easily be the biggest altcoin in terms of the user base.
Ripple’s Boss and Executives Kept Transparency
Transparency is the key to success in any business and more so in the crypto space. At a time when the market is apparently sliding down, any false rumor can break the bones and hit you hard where it hits the most. Fortunately, frequent appearances of CEO Brad Garlinghouse and other top executives of Ripple kept all the false rumors at bay and kept the flow of useful insights into the company’s business continuous and ample. For instance, Ripple released a video on Twitter in the last week of December, in which several members of the company’s executive team, which included valuable insights from Garlinghouse, Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz, and Global Institutional Markets VP Breanne Madigan. The video gave a summary of the year for business, and what we can make of 2020.
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One of the biggest reasons that helped Ripple maintain and build more credibility for itself is the fact that it never over-promoted its achievements, and kept transparency alive. Many top crypto projects like TRON received severe flak from the community for over-hyping things, especially after the infamous fallout of TRON CEO Justin Sun from the Power of One Lunch with Warren Buffett. With Ripple ticking all the right boxes, it is definitely one of the top cryptocurrencies to watch out for in 2020.
