Ripple CEO Intends to 'Press Advantage' With New Investments

Blockchain payments startup Ripple is looking to make new investments and acquisitions, with a few deals reportedly underway, according to the company CEO.

This announcement comes in light of Ripple’s Q2 report, which detailed the company’s total sales of its native token XRP increasing by nearly 48 percent to $251 million. This growth was driven primarily by a strong uptick in institutional sales.

In an interview with Yahoo Finance, Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple CEO, said: “We’re in a very strong position, our business is growing strongly, we have a strong balance sheet, and I intend to press our advantage.”

Additionally, Ripple’s 10 percent equity stake in MoneyGram appears to have paid off. Last week the remittance company announced it began using Ripple’s xRapid transaction product to maintain liquidity when making international transfers.

According to Garlinghouse, MoneyGram integrated Ripple’s tech with its US dollar to Mexican peso and US dollar to Philippine peso pairings, and will “ramp” up the service heading into 2020.

Garlinghouse did not speak specifically about which companies or industries Ripple is targeting, but mentioned Ripple maintains an option to invest a further $20 million in MoneyGram at its original purchase price.

“Anything we can do to accelerate our growth and give us more capabilities that serve customer needs is a good place to be," he said. “We’re probably the largest investor in blockchain and crypto on the planet. We’ve publicly announced we’ve made about $500m [of investments] in the space over the last 18 months.”

In the past, Ripple has advanced the use cases of its native currency XRP by integrating with firms. Over the first two quarters of 2019, the company released 1.6 billion XRP from escrow to develop projects on RippleNet.

The company still owns nearly 55 percent of the total supply of XRP, worth around $13.7 billion.

Brad Garlinghouse photo courtesy of CBInsights