- According to a new report by Messari, Ripple (XRP) was the worst performing asset in the cryptocurrency market in the first quarter of 2020.
- Despite numerous new partnerships and technical advances, Ripple continues to face open lawsuits and a raging coronavirus.
Ripple was able to attract numerous new partners for its proprietary payment technologies and raised more than $200 million in a financing round. Nevertheless, a new report by Messari shows that XRP has the worst performance among the 25 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization in the first quarter of 2020. At the time of writing, XRP is moving sideways (+ 0.78%) and is trading at $0.1889.
Messari says that Ripple has formed a number of new partnerships to increase the adoption and use of XRP. Mexico’s leading Bitcoin exchange Bitso now handles more than 2.5% of all transfers between the US and Mexico, according to official figures. Furthermore, Ripple has drastically reduced monthly sales of XRP and even completely stopped programmatic sales in the fourth quarter of 2019.
However, according to Messari, the latter measure did not have a significant impact, as sales have little impact on the price of XRP:
The decline in XRP sales since the third quarter of 2019 has had little impact on the price movement of XRP.
Ryan Selkis, founder of Messari, also noted on Twitter that XRP was beaten by the up-and-coming Altcoin Chainlink in terms of trading volume and, with a market capitalization of just under $billion, is not very far from Tether ($6.35 billion).
https://twitter.com/twobitidiot/status/1249893225147576320
The report also outlines that the globally prevailing corona pandemic is not a reason for the poor performance of XRP, as the entire cryptomarket and the global economy are also affected. In addition, the volume of remittances on many payment corridors, such as to the Philippines or Thailand, has recently risen to an all-time high.
A negative factor influencing the XRP price could be the still open accusation against Ripple. The company is accused of having sold with XRP an asset that falls under the securities law in force in the United States and should therefore have been registered. In addition, Ripple’s CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, was accused in another class action lawsuit of deliberately misleading investors with the sale of the XRP token. Both lawsuits are currently still pending.
Adaptation progresses despite negative performance
Ripple recently announced that the company is working on the development of a “next-generation trading platform” and is urgently seeking skilled personnel. The platform could be used to launch digital assets on the XRP Ledger. In addition, payment giant Western Union is testing Ripple and the XRP Token to evaluate its potential use for corporate wire transfers. Last year, Western Union concluded that XRP was not a viable alternative:
We’ve done a test with Ripple and continue to do tests […] We learn a lot from Ripple, but we have our own referral system that is very cost effective. Today our tests have shown that using cryptocurrencies or stablecoins like XRP is 5 times more expensive than using our own system.
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