There is no doubt that Ripple and its token XRP have a very high valuation in the market. However, some financial professionals are arguing that Ripple is not your textbook cryptocurrency.
Jens Bader, payments expert and co-founder of a brand new payment company MuchBetter, says Ripple “… might be a good complimentary currency to Bitcoin and Ethereum. But since it is a centralized system, it does not live up to the brief of what a cryptocurrency is meant to do.”
Ripple was indeed designed to provide cross-border settlement between banks. It is solving the problem of slow settlement speeds and high operational costs. And perhaps, that’s the reason why it has been able to create such strong business partnerships.
Ripple Adds New Partners
A currency exchange firm and a telecom provider will be the latest to use XRP as part of their money transfer operations.
One of the firms is IDT Corporation, which provides international long distance and payment services. The other is MercuryFX, which offers discount rates on foreign exchange transactions.
According to Ripple, both firms will use its XRapid product, which relies on XRP as a bridge currency to rapidly transfer and settle global money transfers.
Prior to this, Ripple partnered up with Cuallix, a Mexican financial services firm back in October. They are reportedly using Ripple’s XRP.
XRP’s Price Action
Despite the news, much like most other cryptocurrencies with high market-cap, XRP has been consolidating in the past few days. The range-trade started after last week’s sharp declines. First thing during Thursday’s trading session, however, XRP/USD broke below the daily Ichimoku cloud.
The support levels are at 61% and 78% Fibonacci retracement levels of 1.17 and 0.75 respectively.
The pivot zone is between 1.48 and 1.78. A break back above the bullish Ichimoku cloud would indicate a shift in the market sentiment to the upside.
From late September to early January, XRP saw a massive 1,300% increase in value, blowing away the gains of its major counterparts, Bitcoin and Ethereum.