Ripple's xRapid goes live as $XRP finds its first commercial use case

For the first time in Ripple's history, the native cryptocurrency $XRP will be in commercial use with financial institutions as the company's xRapid product goes live. xRapid allows for cross border transactions to be settled near-instantly using the $XRP token. It has been a long road for Ripple to find a commercial use for the $XRP token, as previous products used by financial institutions did not rely on the protocol's native token.

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The announcement was made at Ripple's Swell Conference where Ripple's CEO Brad Garlinghouse had the following to say: "Silicon Valley loves to talk about disruption … at the end of the day sometimes disruption is exactly what you don't need. It wasn't about replacing banks … there's an opportunity to be a builder and partner with the industry."

Ripple is settling in nicely as a FinTech company providing cross-border transaction capabilities and other services to large financial institutions. That is a noble effort, but the question remains as to whether the progress to date justifies the lofty $23.3 billion "market capitalization" of $XRP. More likely, there will need to be many more partners, significantly more volume and meaningful revenue in the future for Ripple and others to prove the value and necessity of the $XRP token. (Source: CNBC)

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Mike Dudas is one of the founders of The Block and was the CEO until April 2020 and a board member until April 2021. Prior to starting The Block, Mike was co-founder and CRO of Button, the leading global, mobile performance marketing platform. Mike is a builder of mobile commerce businesses, having worked at Google, Braintree/Venmo and PayPal. Early in his career, Mike worked in corporate M&A and strategy for Disney. Mike earned a BA from Stanford and an MBA from Kellogg.