- An analyst believes that Ripple could soon get the UK’s FCA approval after successfully securing a stay on its monetary penalties.
- The XRP community expects Ripple to launch an Initial Public Offering (IPO) in London by 2025 after obtaining a license from the UK financial watchdog.
Ripple Labs applied for a crypto asset firm license in 2023 with the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). However, the uncertainties that surrounded the just concluded legal battle between them and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reportedly delayed the process.
According to a Ripple community member, Ashley PROSPER, the delay stemmed from the fact that Ripple had no idea of the amount to pay to SEC as penalties. Fortunately, the court has ruled that Ripple pays $125 million to the Commission, as we earlier reported.
A few days before the payment deadline, the court approved Ripple’s request for a stay on the monetary penalties. With this, PROSPER believes the company has all the needed information to get an FCA approval in three months.
🚨 BREAKING: RIPPLE TARGETS FCA APPROVAL, EYES LONDON IPO BY 2025! #XRP 📈https://t.co/m6snYujzTF pic.twitter.com/ifPyZlx8ig
— 𝓐𝓶𝓮𝓵𝓲𝓮 (@_Crypto_Barbie) September 9, 2024
On another twist, approval is not 100% guaranteed as the FCA is reported to have declined 87% of all applications in the 2023-2024 fiscal year. The reason cited for these rejections is that they failed to meet their anti-money laundering standards.
According to the details available to us, only 44 firms have been registered out of the 359 applications received since 2020. Per our checks, some of the successful registrants include “Binance’s payment partner BNXA, PayPal’s UK unit, and Komainu.”
Would Ripple Make IPO Move After FCA Approval?
Ripple’s application is also reported to be a step towards the launch of an Initial Public Offering (IPO) in London after CEO Brad Garlinghouse refuted plans for a US IPO early this year.
In the United States, trying to go public with a very hostile regulator that’s approved your S-1 doesn’t sound like a lot of fun to me. Coinbase had their S-1 approved. And now the SEC is suing them for doing things that were outlined in their S-1.
In his recent appearance at the Korea Blockchain Week held in Seoul, Garlinghouse reiterated his position that going public in the US is not part of the immediate plans of the company. According to our research, Garlinghouse repeated this stance in a recent interview with Fortune’s Andrew Nusca.
I’ve always viewed an IPO as a step in the journey, not the end of a journey. What we have done instead of this is new news that we haven’t shared publicly. We have done a series of tender offers where we’ve been buying shares back from investors and employees. Now we’re in the middle of another tender offer, and after we finish this, we will have repurchased $4 billion of stock from our shareholders.
Based on the current sentiment and the anticipation surrounding a potential Ripple IPO in 2025, CNF analysts believe that an FCA license approval and a clear announcement of a London IPO could fuel an unimaginable price rally.
At press time, XRP was trading at $0.537 after surging by 1.48% in the last 24 hours. However, the asset is still struggling to overturn its weekly loss as investors face a negative return of 5%.