Ripple is the prime mover in cryptocurrency real-world adoption. No matter the revolution that is Bitcoin, or the promise and power of Ethereum, Ripple is the industry’s #1 mover/shaker. American Express is just the latest in a series of conventional fintech giants acknowledging this fact.
We heard this from Carlos Carriedo, manager general of American Express corporate payments, at Madrid’s Wings of Change Europe conference at the beginning of December. Carriedo had this to say:
“We did a pilot. We did a test, partnering with Santander locally, and with Ripple just to do cross-border transactions. Cross-border transactions continue to be complex and slow. And in a matter of seconds, through this test, our clients were able to transfer funds in a transparent and seamless way, from one part of the world to the other one.”
Carriedo further emphasised that American Express was exploring ways to make blockchain a standard part of its international business, to cut costs, improve outcomes, and eliminate waits for clients of all types. Ripple has proved again and again that international clients can benefit from its range of products, such as a RapidX, and it’s only a matter of time before it starts to revolutionise credit card companies from the inside out as well.
Will 2019 Be the Year of Ripple XRP?
Crypto enthusiasts still complain about Ripple. It’s seen as too centralised, too serving of the institutional class. Such integration with conventional industry is seen, by some, as contrary to the punk spirit of cryptocurrency, as defined by Bitcoin itself.
However, Ripple’s “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” philosophy may prove more effective than Bitcoin’s social coup approach. Whatever the case, Ripple is at the very least useful, and institutions as diverse as Wal-Mart and the Royal Bank of Canada are taking active notice.
We expect that Ripple will continue to make institutional inroads in 2019. In so doing, it could very well take the top spot from Bitcoin BTC in the crypto market charts. It’s almost unimaginable that any coin other than Bitcoin could hold the top spot, but people used to say the same thing about any coin but Ether occupying market cap spot #2.
XRP has lost significant value in 2018, but it’s been somewhat more resilient than many of its competitors. We expect Ripple to be at the top of the heap in the event of a widespread industry recovery. If the bear market drones on into 2019, we expect Ripple to begin to emerge at the head of a new class of cryptocurrencies and cryptographic tokens – ones typified by active use cases and real-world adoption, not the hype and vapourware that define the industry in 2017 and 2018.
Featured image source: Flickr