Ripple, the company behind one of the largest cryptocurrencies on the market, XRP, might file for an IPO within the next 12 months. So much became clear in an interview with the company’s CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, during the World Economic Forum in Davos.
The past few days have been quite intense as the World Economic Forum 2020 is taking place in Davos, Switzerland. In an interview, Ripple’s CEO, Brad Garlinghouse shared his thoughts on the industry, as well as the company’s plans.
Tweeting on it was Asheesh Birla, SVP of Product at Ripple. One of the things that he shared were Garlinghouse’s thoughts on IPOs in the cryptocurrency industry.
“In the next 12 months, you’ll see IPOs in the crypto/blockchain space. We’re not going to be the first and we’re not going to be the last, but I expect us to be on the leading side… it’s a natural evolution for our company.” –@bgarlinghouse at #WEF20
— Asheesh Birla (@ashgoblue) January 23, 2020
Apparently, the CEO thinks that a lot of companies will attempt to go public and he expects Ripple to be on the leading side, as a “natural evolution” for their company.
Going public means that they will distribute stock on the open market where investors would be able to purchase it and become shareholders.
Whether or not this is possible or within the regulatory scope of existing legislation is still something that has to be found out. In 2019, a few cryptocurrency-related businesses attempted to file an IPO, including Bitmain and Canaan, but the process has been more than rigorous and challenging.
Garlinghouse also outlined that he’s bullish on Bitcoin when it comes to it serving as a store of value, but rather skeptical of BTC being used as a means of payment.
Another thing to consider when filing for an IPO is the company’s valuation, which is largely determined on its performance and, respectively, sales.
According to Ripple’s Q4 2019 markets report, the company shifted to a more conservative volume benchmark for XRP sales and significantly reduced XRP sales. This came as a result of transitioning away from CoinMarketCap towards CryptoCompare Top Tier (CCTT) in an effort to obtain publicly available sources of trusted trading volumes.
CCTT’s reported daily volume for XRP has decreased in the fourth quarter of 2019 from $198.10 million in Q3 to $187.34 million in Q4. This is also a long way below the reported values from the second quarter which was $429.51 million average daily volumes.
In any case, this could be considered as a step in the right direction in the company’s attempt to seek information that hasn’t been tampered with or manipulated.
There is still much progress to be made, and Ripple will continue to evaluate its benchmarks and work proactively with industry participants toward addressing the persistence of fake volumes in industry volume data.