By
Chimamanda U. Martha
April 18th, 2024
Under this new Xpring initiative, Ripple will invest, incubate, acquire and provide grants to business that will make use of XRP or the XRP Ledger.
In a bid to drive further the liquidity and use of XRP tokens, Ripple has just launched a new venture capital fund called Xpring wherein the San Francisco-based startup will be funding businesses that will be developing their products and services around XRP.
Since the beginning of 2018, Ripple has been making important tie-ups and collaborations with several global banking institutions and deployed several blockchain-based services at their end. However, little has been done to push forward the use of XRP tokens and improve their liquidity.
Under this new Xpring initiative, Ripple will invest, incubate, acquire and provide grants to business that will make use of XRP or the XRP Ledger. In an official statement, the company noted:
“As a major contributor to the XRP Ledger codebase and large holder of XRP, we often hear from entrepreneurs and developers that they’d like support in one form or another to help them with their XRP-related projects. As one of the few blockchain companies with traction for a non-speculative use case, we feel we’re uniquely positioned to support entrepreneurs in a meaningful way.”
In order to lead the Xpring project, Ripple has roped-in Ethan Beard as a Senior Vice President of this developer program. From 2009 to 2012 Ethan worked as Director of the Facebook Developer Network, where his was responsible for looking after worldwide developer relations, operations and product marketing for the Facebook API. Prior to that, he also worked as Director of Social Media and Director of New Business Development at Google.
Ethan said:
“I love helping startups leverage new technologies and developments to grow. At Facebook, we saw companies in areas like gaming, music, and news use our platform to become big businesses. Blockchain and digital assets have the ability to solve important problems and XRP – with its speed, scalability and demonstrated real-world use case – is a great tool for startups and entrepreneurs to build businesses around.”
In an interview with TechCrunch, Ripple’s SVP of business operations, Eric van Miltenburg said:
“The goal is to support businesses that we believe would see benefit from building upon the XRP ledger. Support will come in a variety of ways: investment, incubation, and the potential of acquisition or grants. We’re focused on proven entrepreneurs who can use the ledger and XRP to really address their customers’ problems.”
Miltenburg said that a number of businesses and entrepreneurs have been approaching the San-Francisco-based startup for using the XRP tokens “for years”, however, things did not materialize as the company was initially more focused towards developing its financial services.
He further added:
“There’s been enough interaction to say there’s something here [and] now is the time. Over the last four to six months [the idea of Xpring] has really crystallized.”
In the last few months, Ripple has scaled-up its investments in different fintech projects, and has invested in different companies like Blockchain Capital, Omni and others.