Ripple Powers Ahead With New Brazil Office

It was recently announced that Ripple had launched an office in Brazil and had the intention of capturing much more of the Latin American market share. As the 3rd largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, this is big news for the sector.

Ripple is unique in that it functions as both a company and a cryptocurrency protocol, which makes these types of expansions unique in regards to how they can affect the price of the underlying coin. You wouldn’t see Bitcoin “opening an office” anywhere, because that isn’t really part of what makes it work.

The office will be led by Luiz Antonia Sacco, who was formerly CEO of The Warranty Group’s Brazillian subsidiary. His goal is going to be bringing more clients into the RippleNet payment network across Brazil and South America as a whole. Having joined Ripple in March of this year, his directive to expand in the rapidly developing Latin American sector will have a strong effect on the payment network as a whole.

Ripple will not be entirely new to Brazil, as Santander Brasil, BeeTech Global, and Banco Rendimento are already clients. This has forged the perfect second stage of entry, for which Sacco will be the leader.

The South America Push

Ripple’s push will have two main aspects to it. First, there will be the desire to accumulate more clients and capture market share early on in this push to enable major payment benefits. But secondly, Ripple will be launching educational and training programs across Brazil. The goal here would be to create bottom-up demand for blockchain solutions by teaching students about the power of the technology. This could also help create pressure to buy Ripple in South America. Additionally, it will help train workers to be proficient in the field for potential employment opportunities.

With Asia already developing very rapidly, and quickly becoming more expensive to operate in, it has been predicted that South America will see the next big slew of developments, as it has more developed infrastructure than Africa does right now. Ripple stands to benefit from this development healthily if they can capture clients, customers, and potential employees.

RippleNet’s Current Performance

RippleNet is reported to have over 200 global customers, and is currently trying to find ways to enable more accurate XRP trading volumes to avoid the worries that currently surround Bitcoin’s fake trading volume.

The SEC recently made a decision in favor of the innovation being presented by Ripple, which should help grant it some reprieve. Ripple and Bitcoin are both top competitors in their respective sectors, but Ripple also has to compete directly with banking solutions, as well as Paypal and Swift. At the same time, Stellar Lumens function as a direct competitor to them, which means they need to compete both with blockchain companies and major conglomerates. Recent results have shown numerous small wins, but that momentum needs to continue for anything meaningful to happen with Ripple.

Ripple’s price is currently in a downward slide as it breaks through several support levels to land somewhere around the $0.40 level. It is unclear where or when the low will be found, but ideally, news like the Brazil announcement will serve to boost the fundamentals and slow down this retracement.