The CEO of crypto hedge fund BitBull Capital says he expects the price of XRP to fall further after recent revelations on one of Ripple’s biggest partnerships.
Joe DiPasquale says news that MoneyGram does not hold XRP is likely a surprise to many traders.
MoneyGram is the most high profile user of Ripple’s remittance platform On-Demand Liquidity (ODL), which uses XRP as a bridge currency.
The solution allows the payments giant to hand fiat over to cryptocurrency exchanges, which convert it to XRP and send the digital asset to a corresponding exchange, where it is then converted back to fiat. The process is designed to offer banks and financial institutions a way to use XRP and remain regulatory compliant.
But DiPasquale tells Forbes he believes confirmation that MoneyGram has no plans to hold XRP itself is a blow to the third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap.
“XRP has been historically very sensitive to adoption-related news pertaining to banking and money services partners, since they represent the biggest clientele for Ripple’s services.
In light of this, the statement from MoneyGram has dealt a big blow to XRP’s already weak position, especially since it was believed Ripple and MoneyGram would have a closer relationship due to the former’s investment in the latter. Now, with Bitcoin’s price also experiencing downward pressure, we expect XRP to slide further due to this news.”
XRP is in the green on Wednesday, along with the rest of the crypto market.
It reached a 2019 low of $0.1802 yesterday, and has since bounced to $0.1913 at time of publishing, according to CoinMarketCap.