XRP, the digital currency owned by Ripple, was given a boost this week after it started trading on the Dubai-based BitOasis cryptocurrency exchange BitOasis. But the positive wave given by this announcement had a very short time effect.
XRP’s value, which has declined by around 70% since it hit an all-time high of $3.79 per token at the beginning of January, saw a brief resurgence to $1.42 on Monday after BitOasis trading started.
However, by Wednesday January 31, XRP price fallen to $1.15, with a market cap of $44.4 billion, and now it is trading around 1.12.
Ripple’s demise over the last month is not isolated, but it has largely followed a general fall of the cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin is down 40% on its January high of $17,635, while Ethereum, which once again has the world’s second-highest market cap, is down 22% from a high of $1,431.
But XRP investors are not worried at all. In fact, the San Francisco based company announced that it would trial Ripple’s blockchain technology in partnership with Credit Agricole, to enable quicker cross-country payments. We talked about this partnership in this post.
The test will run for six months and cover cross-border salary payments in Swiss Francs.
Meanwhile, the UAE-based National Bank of Ras Al Khaimah (RAKBANK) has said that it will partner with Ripple to enable instant payments to India.
Ripple’s XRP token is specifically built to enable faster cross-border payments and to always give liquidity to banks and financial institutions.
More positive news for XRP investors came in the fact that Gregg Kidd, an early investor in Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange, has invested $58 million in Uphold, a new online exchange. Part of that investment is specifically dedicated to bring Ripple and XRP onto the trading platform.
