Brad Chillum
The Ripple price soared on Wednesday following the FinTech startup’s announcement that it had opened an office in Singapore as part of its continuing plan to penetrate the Asian markets.
As CCN has reported, blockchain payments firm Ripple has been making a concerted effort to establish a significant footprint in the Asian banking sector. Several weeks ago, Ripple opened an office in India–the world’s largest receiver of remittances. This week, the company upped the ante by establishing a base in Singapore, a country which handles more than $550 billion in trading volume annually.
Interestingly, Ripple’s new office opened just days before Singaporean banks began denying banking services to bitcoin and other blockchain-based startups operating within the country, a move contrary to the country’s reputation as a FinTech-friendly region.
In the days following this announcement, the Ripple price has begun a marked advance. While some of this movement is the result of the general market uptrend–the bitcoin price broke past $4,100 on Wednesday and the combined value of all cryptocurrencies has swelled by $20 billion in the past four days–Ripple has been among the week’s biggest movers.
As recently as September 23, Ripple was trading at a global average of $0.171. Following Wednesday’s 9% rally, the Ripple price has climbed to $0.204–a combined ascent of 20%. Ripple now has a market cap of $7.8 billion which has enabled XRP to fight back into the 3rd-place position in the market cap rankings and put more than $250 million of distance between it and 4th-place bitcoin cash.
