In under 12 months, according to Ethan Beard, an executive at Xpring, an initiative created to improve the Ripple ecosystem and create use cases around XRP, Ripple has committed more than $500 million.
In the upcoming months, Beard stated that Xpring will invest in various open source protocols, developer projects, and large scale partnerships related to XRP to develop more “real use cases for XRP”.
Is the breakthrough XRP needed near?
Throughout the past several months, despite positive developments and deals especially in the Asia crypto market, the price of XRP, the native crypto asset on Ripple’s blockchain network, has been stagnant in comparison to other crypto assets like bitcoin.
Speaking to publications at Fortune’s Brainstorm Finance conference in New York, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said that the launch of Libra catalyzed contract activity, creating a record week for Ripple in regard to contract signings.
Last month, the Libra Association, a Switzerland-based consortium founded by major conglomerates in the likes of Facebook, Mastercard, and Visa created a crypto asset called Libra backed by real-world assets.
At the time, Garlinghouse said:
This is going to be a record week for Ripple. It has absolutely catalyzed contract activity. This has been a call to action. I will send a case of champagne to David Marcus, the guy who runs Libra.
The announcement of Xpring to invest upwards of $500 million in XRP-based projects comes after the statement of Garlinghouse on June 20.
Beard and the Xpring team stated:
Xpring has quickly grown and to date we have committed $500M in support of over 20 companies, ranging from independent developer projects to larger scale partnerships. Our efforts have expanded to focus has been on two areas: build the best crypto infrastructure through contributions to open source crypto protocols such as the XRP Ledger and Interledger projects; and help innovative blockchain projects grow through partnership and investment.
In the near term, the Xpring team said that with its capital and resources, it intends to create an easier ecosystem for developers to build projects around XRP, incentivizing both independent developers and companies to utilize XRP.
Xpring has funded various platforms such as content monetization platform Coil and gaming platform Forte to encourage the usage of XRP.
The core technology of Ripple, XRP Ledger, and decentralized financial projects are expected to remain as the main focus of Xpring.
Some under-reported deals
Similar to Ripple’s investment in Moneygram that is anticipated by investors as a deal that would ultimately lead Moneygram to integrate XRP into its system over the long run, Coil invested $20 million in Imgur on June 26.
Imgur, the biggest image hosting platform in the global market with more than 300 million users, received venture equity from Coil, a company founded by former Ripple chief technology officer Stefan Thomas.
Some anticipate that venture equity deals like the Coil-Imgur fundraise would lead to increased use cases of XRP in the upcoming years.
Alan Schaaf, Imgur CEO, said upon the finalization of the deal:
Imgur began in 2009 as a gift to the internet. Over the last 10 years we’ve built one of the largest, most positive online communities, based on our core value to ‘give more than we take. Coil’s technology will open up new opportunities for users to give to one another and support the community in new ways.
Deals like Moneygram and Imgur could potentially lead to XRP integrations in the future, which would improve the usability of the asset.
