Is the world’s 4th largest crypto currency by market cap thinking about going public in an IPO in 2024?
Ripple is a digital payment or a remittance network created in order to establish an instant transfer of funds across the globe. The native cryptocurrency of the Ripple network is also called XRP.
According to the cryptocurrency’s description on the WorldCoinIndex website, “Ripple was co-founded in 2012 by Jed McCaleb and Chris Larsen, and XRP was released that same year. Today Ripple facilitates the seamless transfer of money by connecting banks, payment providers, corporates and digital asset exchanges through the RippleNet. The Ripple XRP tokens provide banks and other financial institutions an on-demand solution to sources liquidity for instant global transfers.”
“As the Ripple network is based on blockchain technology it allows for low-cost global funds transfers just in a matter of few seconds. The Ripple’s distributed ledger XRP makes use of a consensus protocol that allows for payments and exchanges to take place in a distributed process.”
There’s been rumors, or more accurately “hope” from hodlers of XRP, which for full disclosure include me as well, that the company behind Ripple may be planning to go public someday soon.
Those hopes were put on pause recently when Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse told CNBC in an interview that Ripple explored markets outside the U.S. for its initial public offering (IPO) due to the “hostile” nature of U.S. regulators.
I’m pretty sure he was talking about the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler, who Brad Garlinghouse called a “political liability” based on his stance of all cryptocurrencies being in his opinion securities except Bitcoin and possible Ethereum.
The fact that an incredibly successful technology company based in San Francisco, and who does millions of dollars in business around the world, would feel like the climate here in the U.S. is so hostile to cryptocurrency companies like Ripple that they would even consider going offshore to someplace like London Stock Exchange or even take their business to China and list on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, is insane and shows something needs to be done about the SEC’s hostility toward cryptocurrency firms here in the U.S..
The main reason Ripple was even considering an IPO in the first place was to allow their shareholders, who have been holding Ripple stock for almost 12 years now since the company was first started, to have some liquidity and be free to sell some of their shares.
To address this Ripple recently bought back shares from its shareholders using $1 billion dollars from their reserves, according to a report by Reuters.
This buyback has bought Ripple some time, and hopefully when they are ready for an IPO the cryptocurrency regulatory environment will have improved here in the U.S. so a valuable tech company like Ripple doesn’t need to consider taking their business overseas and listing on a foreign stock exchange to get away from the SEC’s Chairman Gary Gensler vindictive pursuit of cryptocurrency companies.
Crypto firm Ripple explored IPO outside of U.S. but won’t go public soon