As we’re getting closer to the official announcement of Facebook’s cryptocurrency, the community starts to question its impact on other projects, including Ripple (XRP). The latter, however, doesn’t seem to show any signs of slowing down, announcing a strategic partnership with money transfer giant MoneyGram.
Facebook’s 2 billion user base and its intentions to launch a cryptocurrency soon do sound like a potential threat to existing projects in the field. As Cryptopotato recently reported, the social media attempts to allow its users to store, trade, and exchange the new cryptocurrency which will purportedly be a dollar-pegged stable coin, on its applications including WhatsApp and Messenger.
Some have already recognized this as a challenge for Ripple (XRP). Namely, Charlie Shrem, a founding member of the Bitcoin Foundation, sees Facebook’s Libra as a direct competitor of Ripple.
Facebook is launching their global crypto coin called “Libra”. What’s interesting is they are offering companies to pay $10m to become “validators”. If anything, it renders Ripple useless 😂. The first companies to create a LIBRA/BITCOIN exchange will make a killing!
— Charlie Shrem (@CharlieShrem) June 8, 2019
In any case, we know for a fact that Facebook wants its cryptocurrency to fit within the regulatory purview of authorities including the US Treasury and the Bank of England. Reports have it that the announcement will be made particularly soon and this has supposedly caused the company’s stocks to gain about 4.2% at the time of this writing.
Unfazed by the news, Ripple, has announced a strategic partnership with money transfer giant MoneyGram. It’s one of the largest companies in the field throughout the entire world. The initial term of the agreement is for two years and Ripple will become MoneyGram’s key partner when it comes to foreign exchange settlement using digital assets and cross-border payments.
Additionally, Ripple has also agreed to provide a capital commitment amounting to $50 million in exchange for equity throughout the 2-year period.
Following the announcement, XRP’s price instantly spiked with about 6 percent and even though it retraced a bit, it’s still trading positively throughout the past 24 hours.
In any case, we have yet to find out the official detail surrounding project Libra and whether or not it would impose any competition upon existing projects such as Ripple or any other, for that matter.
