Ripple strives to continually expand the XRP ecosystem. The latest investment in Coinme, a crypto ATM company, is another step that will drive the adoption of XRP.
Ripple’s investment firm Xpring has invested more than $1.5 million in Seattle-based crypto-ATM company Coinme, according to an official press release. Coinme is a pioneer in crypto ATMs and installed the first Bitcoin ATM in the United States in 2014. Since then, the company has grown steadily and currently operates a total of 2,583 crypto ATMs around the world. It therefore describes itself as the largest Bitcoin kiosk network in the world.
With this investment, Ripple aims to promote the adoption of XRP. The money will be used for the launch of new machines and the growing key markets:
This is the kind of infrastructure we want to support at Xpring as it is aligned with our mission to drive the spread and adoption of cryptocurrencies such as XRP to solve real-world problems.
This is Xpring’s first investment in the cryptocurrency industry. The funds will be used to acquire additional licenses for nationwide operations and expansion into key international markets.
Will this investment push the price of XRP?
Innovations and new technologies are the key for an increasing adaptation and spread of crypto currencies in people’s everyday lives. Coinme’s vision is to operate a global network of ATMs that will eclipse the spread of the largest Fiat ATM industry. Through its recent partnership with Coinstar, Coinme already operates the world’s largest crypto-currency ATM network.
Can’t wait to see #XRP on @CoinmeATM! Investing in Coinme by Suneet Wadhwa https://t.co/wVSS2Qixpr
— Ethan Beard (@ethanbeard) 13. September 2019
However, the XRP price has yet to show any visible reaction and remains in a sustained downtrend. The price was around USD 0.25 at the time of writing. The market capitalization of XRP is USD 10.97 billion. XRP thus ranks third among the world’s largest cryptocurrencies.
Due to the stagnating price, however, the Ripple Community has asked the company to stop selling XRP within the next 60 days. If the company does not want to meet this demand, it has been threatened with a possible hard fork for XRP. This scenario is currently being hotly debated on various social media channels.
Is a hard fork for XRP imminent?
The initiator of the initiative is the Crypto-Influencer Bitlord, who has written a petition to Ripple demanding that the sale of XRP be discontinued. According to the company, Ripple earned $251.51 million from the sale of XRP in the second quarter. The community believes that a continued sale of XRP will negatively impact the price.
To discuss a possible Ripple Hard Fork, Bitlord has created a Discord channel called “Ripple One”. More than 100,000 followers were informed about the creation of this discussion room.
Proud to announce the #RippleOne discord channel has opened!
This is where we will begin structuring the $XRP fork planning our new future ❤️
Share this link and join us now! https://t.co/XZxeWQGpW1
— CRYPTO BITLORD (@Crypto_Bitlord) 12. September 2019
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse first spoke about this topic in an official interview on CNN. Since Ripple uses the open source XRP ledger, anyone can theoretically do a hard fork if they have sufficient programming skills. Hard Forks are especially popular with Bitcoin. This has resulted in countless hard forks like Bitcoin Cash, BSV or Bitcoin Diamond. Garlinghouse explains that he has lost the overview (freely translated):
When people talk about Hard Fork technologies, you have seen how Bitcoin has forced itself several times. You have Bitcoin Cash, BSV, Bitcoin Diamond, I can’t name them all. There are four or five forks of the Bitcoin blockchain. Bitcoin, obviously the primary and original BTC, is still the most remarkable.
But in the same way, people can take XRP, an open source technology, and hypothetically assume that they could make it if they did.
So far, an XRP hard fork is the demand of a small part of the crypto community worried about the success of XRP. So the petition is currently supported by less than 4,000 people. Whether it actually comes to a hard fork and whether the project receives further attention remains to be seen for the time being.
Subscribe to our daily newsletter!
No spam, no lies, only insights. You can unsubscribe at any time.
You can watch the complete interview of Brad Garlinghouse on CNN below:
