XRP Surges 22% Ahead of Dubai Office Announcement

Beginning on Saturday, Nov 03, Ripple (XRP) began a huge ascent, seeing its value climb to as high as $0.56 and its market cap exceed $22 billion as the digital asset briefly toppled Ethereum as the second largest cryptocurrency. In the same period, XRP trade volume more than tripled, reaching its peak on Nov 06. As of writing, the trade volume remains more than double that of the previous week. In the month prior to the announcements, XRP gradually fell from a peak of $0.57 to trade between $0.40 and $0.46 throughout mid-October to early November. During this time, XRP struggled to break its 12-day EMA, finally breaking through on Nov 05 — spiking from $0.46 to $0.56 over a period of 3 days.

Good News Galore

The spike comes following announcements that Ripple Labs plans to open an office in Dubai by the end of the year, signalling the firm’s entrance into middle eastern markets. The move would see Ripple having major operations in almost every continent, barring Africa (and Antarctica), already having offices in India, London, Luxembourg, New York, San Francisco, and Sydney. In the past month, Ripple has steadily added partners to xRapid — a service which allows financial institutions to carry out international transfers using its XRP cryptocurrency while reducing their liquidity costs. To date, over 10 partners are fixed to work with xRapid, including Bittrex, Mercury FX and, most recently, SendFriend. SendFriend is a platform that uses blockchain technology to significantly reduce remittance costs. Partnering with xRapid should allow it to further reduce these costs whilst increasing the speed of transfers. In other news, having previously struggled to get listed on exchanges in the past due to being a private blockchain, Ripple has since made great strides. Just last week, XRP was listed on Koineks, Turkey’s fastest growing crypto exchange, and is set to be listed on the soon to be launched FoLex exchange next week. What is your opinion on Ripple? Will it succeed in becoming the payment method of choice for cross-border payments? Is a private blockchain compatible with the Satoshi’s vision? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!