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| Ripple offers crypto service for financial companies |
Fintech startup Ripple said it is launching a new product that will enable financial services companies to give customers the ability to buy and sell cryptocurrencies.
The San Francisco-based company says the feature, called Liquidity Hub, allows its institutional clients to access digital assets from a variety of sources, including market makers, platforms, and over-the-counter trading platforms.
The company said that customers can do business in a variety of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Ethereum Classic, Bitcoin Cash and Ripple.
The company hopes to be able to offer other digital assets such as NFTs or non-fungible tokens in the future. The company said that the feature is currently in preview. However, the launch is scheduled for 2022.
The company was founded in 2012 and is closely related to the cryptocurrency XRP. The company is marketing XRP to financial companies as a gateway to accelerate international payments through on-demand liquidity products.
According to CoinMarketCap, XRP holds nearly $60 billion in coins in circulation and is the seventh largest cryptocurrency in the world.
The company also sells a platform called RippleNet, a financial information service that banks and other financial institutions use to send money across borders. The company advertises its products as a competitor to SWIFT, a global interbank payments network.
Litigation before the Securities and Exchange Commission
It did so during a legal battle between the company and the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Regulators are suing the company and its executives, saying it has raised more than $1.3 billion through unregistered securities offerings.
The company is taking legal action and believes that XRP should not be taken as collateral. At a time when interest in cryptocurrencies has grown exponentially, the company is entering a new product category.
Big companies are also increasingly using cryptocurrencies, and companies like Mastercard and PayPal are now backing digital assets.
Like airlines and Google Flights, the company's new tool can be thought of as a combination of different cash and asset positions.
Ripple said that the first customer to use the service was Coinme, a US-based cryptocurrency platform.
She added, “We have a long tradition of working with financial institutions, cryptocurrency platforms, brokers and market makers. Our institutional clients can now benefit directly from this. We plan to support various assets. We plan for further development in the future. Lots of high quality assets like NFT.
The company said it is offering lines of credit to its financial partners through XRP to avoid pre-financing from the Liquidity Hub.
Ripple, recently valued at $10 billion, is one of the largest crypto startups in the world.