After a rumor broke out yesterday that a California-based crypto start-up Ripple has acquired the major US-based money transfer company MoneyGram, both companies refused to comment. Still, even the rumor was enough for XRP price 8% boost.
Yesterday someone calling himself @TheCryptHawk on Twitter circulated a false rumor about Ripple acquiring an international money transfer company MoneyGram.
Seems like it’s out! #Ripple acquired MoneyGram leading to a huge access / deal with Walmart! More to come believe me …
— CryptHawk (@TheCryptHawk) June 5, 2019
However, as it’s quickly found out, the same account (who, by the way, presents himself as a prominent crypto analyst) has been associated with, at least two different scams. One is a Ponzi bot and another could be a fake ICO for hardware wallet.
🚨HYPE/SCAM ALERT🚨@TheCryptHawk circulated a FALSE rumor earlier about @Ripple acquiring @MoneyGram.
WARNING: This account has been directly associated with, at least, two different SCAMs:
1) A PONZI bot.
2) A FAKE ICO for a hardware wallet.DO NOT TRUST THIS ACCOUNT.
— XRP Research Center (@XrpCenter) June 5, 2019
To be honest, there have been several claims that Ripple is planning something “big” for the near future, but none of them said anything being related to Ripple acquiring MoneyGram.
CryptHawk said that Ripple acquired MoneyGram on Monday after discussing some issues since November 2018.
Every PR is a Good PR
Several individuals and users on social media asked him how he got access to this information but he was not able to answer how. He kept repeating though that Ripple purchased the money transfer company earlier this week. He also said it’s a:
“Bitconnect sorcery with a bit of Justin Sun lunch sorcery.”
However, both companies stated that they do not comment on speculations and rumors as a rule, but should there be any official news, they’d let the public know, so – there was an obvious intention to push both coin and stock a little bit up. Every PR is a good PR even the fake one, right?
But let’s be serious, the truth is MoneyGram, founded back in 1940, was on sale recently as it’s trying to deal with falling revenues and restructure its debt pile, which reportedly totaled USD 902.8 million as of the end of September 2018 and comes due next year.
Also, the company’s first quarter didn’t sound promising as said:
“The Company ended the first quarter of 2019 with a cash and cash equivalents balance of $129.9 million compared to $145.5 million at the end of 2018. First quarter interest expense was $13.9 million and capital expenditures for the first quarter were $12.7 million.”
What destroyed them the most, was the $1.2 billion deal with Ant Financial, owned by Jack Ma, the executive chairman of Chinese giant Alibaba Group Holding. In January last year the deal fell apart after a U.S. government panel rejected it due to national security concerns.
In a deal with Ant Financial, the company would be sold for USD 18 per share, or more than USD 1 billion. Now, its share price in the market stands at USD 1.41, while its market capitalization is USD 83.5 million. It’s pretty reasonable why would they be thinking of selling.
There Actually Is a MoneyGram – Ripple Partnership But…
However, it is true that Ripple and MoneyGram had been collaborating in the past. In 2018, they signed a partnership in order to improve the payments sector. MoneyGram decided to integrate the xVia product released by Ripple.
But, bare in mind that four weeks ago, a card company VISA announced that it has acquired control of Earthport, the company that has a payments network with banking relationships in 87 countries and is a Ripple partner. VISA said they are planning to use its network to create an alternative to SWIFT payments. The market size for money sent by wire transfer or bank accounts globally is $80 trillion.
However, it seems that Crypto Twitter has again outgo itself because yesterday, a website Smartetereum decided to publish “news” about the Vice President of American Express Colin O’Flaherty confirming the company was officially using xCurrent, a blockchain-based financial solution from Ripple Inc. Apparently he said that while speaking at the last day of The Money 20/20 event held in Amsterdam. That maybe wouldn’t be strange if we don’t know that a certain Twitter user @XRP_Canada didn’t tweet exactly that – back in 2018!
VP of AMEX Colin O’flaherty confirmed that the company was officially using Ripple’s xCurrent.
xCurrent is integrated with AMEX’s infrastructure and will facilitate payments from customers to SMEs.#xrpcommunity #xrparmy https://t.co/rVt4qPVdvC
— XRP_Canada ✖️ (@XRP_Canada) July 3, 2018
Even though we would like this to be a Matrix glitch so Keanu can come and explain to us how the XRP price will look like in 2020, we still think that this is just a way of how the price is trying to be pumped. Are the Smartetereums Santa Ripple’s little helpers, we can not be sure but we can say – gotcha!
Back to the beginning, let’s just say that we can conclude that event though for Ripple, acquisition of MoneyGram would be a huge thing, just last month, Ripple partnered with MoneyGram’s competitor, money transfer company Ria Money Transfer, a subsidiary of payment service provider Euronet Worldwide.
Be it as it may, it seems that something like that won’t happen in the soon future but we hope @Crypthawk got his money back since there was a massive growth of 8 percent that now is back to 5 percent with the XRP price of around $0,42.
