Despite the breathless coverage of cryptocurrency news, investors often miss the bigger stories unfolding over months and years.
For example, The World Bank announced last year that global remittance payments could reach $466.0 billion in 2018. (Source: “Remittances to Recover Modestly After Two Years of Decline,” The World Bank, October 3, 2017.)
A logical reading of this information should have been sending XRP prices soaring, yet the crypto is down 5.9% this morning. The XRP to USD exchange rate is down to $1.07.
Ripple (XRP) Price Chart
But let’s back up: Why should higher remittance payments equal higher Ripple prices?
Well, there’s a long answer and a short one. The short answer is that Ripple helps transfer money across borders. As a result, more remittance payments is good for business.
If you keep digging though, you’ll realize that this connection is not a coincidence. Ripple has signed deals with three of the five biggest remittance providers in the world.
It signed a partnership with MoneyGram International, Inc. (NASDAQ:MGI) at the start of the year, then followed that up with similar arrangements with Mercury Foreign Exchange Limited (otherwise known as Mercury FX) and IDT Corporation (NYSE:IDT).
This looks like a strategic move.
Of course, Ripple will continue to woo commercial banks that move trillions of dollars around the globe. But it probably recognizes that banks are cautious and highly regulated. They adapt slowly to change.
By contrast, remittance providers are nimble organizations. They don’t pose massive, systemic risks to the global financial order. As a result, they are lightly regulated. Knowing this, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse is probably trying to carve out a portion of the aforementioned $466.0 billion for Ripple.
If you’re looking for more evidence of Ripple’s positive future, consider that MoneyGram, Mercury FX, and IDT all agreed to use XRP, which very few people thought was possible. In fact, skeptics insisted that nobody would ever opt for XRP when they could simply use Ripple’s “xCurrent” software.
That theory has gone out the window in 2018, yet XRP prices remain deflated.
Analyst Take
Markets are rarely wrong over the long term, at least when it comes to price dynamics. But the key phrase in that sentence is “long term.” Right now, in the short term, investors are ignoring the potential impact of Ripple’s foray into the remittance market.
This imbalance can’t last forever, which is one of the many reasons we maintain our $10.00 Ripple price prediction for 2018.
Read more at:
www.profitconfidential.com
