Ripple Jumps 9% as Mainstream Appetite Grows

Ripple XRP swung back into positive territory on Monday, with prices approaching $1.00 as South Korea’s Woori Bank became the latest financial institution to test drive the payment platform. For all the doubt surrounding XRP’s viability as a usable token, institutions are lining up by the dozens to integrate the platform into their value chain.

Ripple’s native XRP token climbed 9% to $0.98 on Monday, after hitting a session high of $1.03. The cryptocurrency is on track for its highest settlement in almost two weeks.

XRP is the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $38.5 billion. It peaked at n0. 2 at the start of the year with a total capitalization of $142 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Trade volumes have declined dramatically over the past three months, from a daily high of around $9 billion to a low of around $250 million. Volumes over the last 24 hours averaged $920 million.

The bulk of the trades were placed on South Korea’s Bithumb, which processed more than 26% of the daily turnover. Binance also saw 12% of the daily transaction amount.

Meanwhile, the broader cryptocurrency market touched 12-day highs of $469 billion.

South Korean Partnership Announced

The Woori Bank of South Korea has reportedly entered a partnership with Ripple to test cross-border flows using the distributed ledger technology (DLT). Local media sources have reported that the bank is planning to commercialize the platform at some point this year.

Over 60 Japanese financial institutions have already signed up to test drive Ripple’s services, including cross-border payment platform xRapid and the xCurrent liquidity system.

Although Ripple has made considerable inroads into mainstream circles, critics say XRP adoption is far from guaranteed. That’s because banks partnering with Ripple do not need to use the token to access its blockchain protocol. Two notable examples are Standard Chartered and Santandar, which are banks that have used Ripple technology for cross-border payments but have no plans to integrate XRP. That being said, the banks have expressed optimism in Ripple’s technology.

Ripple’s near-instant transaction speeds continue to draw attention from major financial institutions in Asia and elsewhere. Unlike other crypto projects, Ripple is also said to be working within the regulatory frameworks of existing financial institutions. This makes it less prone to unexpected shifts in the current regulatory regime governing (or, in this case, not governing) the cryptocurrency market.