Ripple on a Run: Announces Expansion into Iceland

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Ripple, the company behind the third-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, XRP, has announced yet another acquisition as the company looks to continue expanding its growth and adoption across the globe. 

Ripple has been under a bit of pressure from its community of late with the companies control of the supply of XRP catching the ire of many in the XRP community. The company has been accused of manipulating the price of the token by dumping coins onto the market, something they have denied. 

However, in terms of the work being done by the company in charge of the XRP token, they are continuing with their primary business of pushing adoption of the interbanking token. The latest move has seen Ripple acqui-hire the Icelandic crypto trading firm Algrim.

This sees the launch of the company in the small nation of Iceland, in the North Sea, but also helps them get a further footing in Europe and also follows off the back of another acquisition announced just last week.

The previous acquisition preceding this one saw Ripple announced its acquisition of Logos, adding eight engineers to the Xpring team who will lead the charge in exploring solutions for a decentralized finance (DeFi) system built on XRP. 

The idea behind this latest aqui-hire is not only to get a footing in Europe and Iceland, but also to use the expertise of those in the icelandic company. The new Icelandic team will play an integral role in the ongoing development of Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) product which utilizes XRP for production cross-border payments. Iceland will serve as one of Ripple’s engineering hubs with plans to bring on more technical talent in the region.

“With built-in expertise in trading and exchanges, the addition of Algrim’s engineering talent to our team will be instrumental in continuing the momentum we’re already experiencing with On-Demand Liquidity,” said Christopher Kanaan, SVP of Engineering. “We’ve been committed to sourcing expert crypto and trading talent in key global markets since day one, and the acquisition of the Algrim engineering team is a successful example of doing just that.”

Powerful ally

Although Iceland is a small nation, and hardley a heavy hitter in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space, Ripple have done well to integrate with them as there is a lot of experience and expertise at their back.

Algrim has integrated more than 30 markets into its developing crypto trading platform over the past two years. It’s engineers bring more than a decade’s worth of experience to the Ripple team, according to the announcement.

Algrim CEO, Dadi Armannsson explained:

“Both companies share a vision to enable widespread adoption of digital assets and blockchain technology, which aligns directly with what we’ve been working towards for the past several years.”

Ripple could use some help in pushing it to become the trusted cryptocurrency for interbanking and cross border payments as there is a developing competition emerging from the likes of JPMorgan and Wells Fargo, who major institutions who are developing their own solutions. 

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