- Ashton Kutcher donated $4m in XRP on primetime television
- RippleNet implemented by Kuwait Finance House
- Uphold also implement XRP
It’s been another good week for cryptocurrency cross-border payments startup Ripple. In addition to having its digital currency (XRP) added to offerings from international money transfers challenger bank Revolut due to “overwhelming demand” from its customers, the biggest Islamic lender in Kuwait – Kuwait Finance House (KFH) – has just announced that it will be adding its own name to the ever-extending list of fintech firms implementing RippleNet.
And it doesn’t stop there: Ripple made primetime US television last week when actor Ashton Kutcher publicly donated $4m in XRP (a “late birthday gift”) during a guest appearance on Ellen DeGeneres’ Show.
The latter might seem a trivial incident in the scheme of things. But it isn’t: Kutcher showed millions of viewers just how RippleNet is likely to be the payment option of the future. His donation (to Ellen’s Wildlife Fund in Rwanda) took just 15 seconds to complete and was executed with a token transaction fee. That’s one hugely prominent debut for a cryptocurrency on mainstream media.
Kutcher isn’t only a renowned actor. He’s amply demonstrated that he’s a shrewd venture capitalist with Sound Ventures too, so his clear endorsement of RippleNet carries additional weight. He revealed during his appearance on Ellen’s show that Sound Ventures is already investing in Ripple, and he talked animatedly onscreen about how fast, easy and secure the transaction was as his famous interviewer pressed the button to send the money (a conventional transaction would take days to clear, not seconds).
His praise for Ripple continued. He disclosed onscreen how he came to meet Ripple, and became impressed with its emphasis on ethics and generosity.
Kutcher said: “So, we were meeting with these folks and were talking to us about the ethics of this company and this platform and how they actually really care about being an ethical company and giving a portion of this platform away to people that are doing good in the world.”
Ripple is now close to, if not actually at, the top of the list of digital assets claiming bragging rights over having the most prominent partnerships in the fintech business and beyond. A recent study by social trading network eToro recently found that Ripple was the most popular digital money transfers asset on its platform.
Its cross-border payments solutions have without doubt gained the lion’s share of influence by crypto-providers in the fintech industry. The upstart’s money transfers solutions – xRapid, xCurrent and xVia – are gaining greater and greater traction among fintechs because (as Kutcher pointed out) they deliver cross-border payments efficiently, swiftly, securely and cheaply.
Fast-rising exchange platform Uphold has also become a recent addition to Ripple’s expanding roster. Uphold just announced that it, too, has completed integration of Ripple (XRP). That’s no small achievement for Ripple: Uphold offers more than 1,500 trading pairs along with 9 alternative methods of purchasing assets, including credit and debit cards, exchange and bank transfers. In a short space of time it’s become a major exchange player, and Ripple is now included in its offerings.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Ripple (XRP) was today ranked as the number 3 digital token on the market by Coinmarketcap – reward, perhaps, for deploying the most solid partnerships in the cryptoverse and the only blockchain-based platform currently being adopted by banking institutions across the world.
