With a view to satisfy a huge demand for XRP, Uphold has added support for this cryptocurrency and has become one of the largest platforms to buy it.
Cloud-based digital money platform Uphold has launched support for Ripple’s XRP cryptocurrency. Thanks to XRP joining to Uphold‘s existing list of currencies and cryptocurrencies, platform’s users will have an opportunity to buy, hold, convert and transact XRP together with Bitcoin, Ethereum and Bitcoin cash and many other assets on Uphold menu.
Upholds’s users are now able to exchange XRP directly on the website with no fees being charged for the first five million XRP purchased. XRP can be traded and used in transactions on the platform. Thanks to this move, users can convert XRP into seven other cryptocurrencies, 23 fiat currencies, and four precious metals available for them.
Before taking this decision to add new cryptocurrency to their platform, the team conducted a survey on Twitter which showed that 51% of 12,000 users who expressed their opinion wanted to see XRP in the list of available cryptocurrencies.
Among other events leading up to this step we can highlight the fact that in January the company received a $57.5 million investment from a former Ripple chief risk officer Greg Kidd. And in February Uphold acquired Cortex MCP, a mobile commerce platform.
XRP integration to the platform was rather a time-consuming process for Uphold and took nearly a month. Uphold vice chairman J.P. Thieriot gave his comments: “Generally we have to find counterparties we can trade with, given our system, [since] we don’t have an internal orderbook. We have to create an integration with a third party. In the case of XRP, it’s an entirely new blockchain – it’s not like adding an ERC-20 token, which is relatively trivial for us.”
The company said that in the following few weeks they would proceed to the next stage of XRP support, it means that they are going to integrate with the Ripple network itself. Due to this, direct deposits and withdrawals via the mainnet will be added.
Now Uphold has become one of the largest platforms to purchase XRP that at press time is traded at $0.55, according to CoinMarketCap.
Recently, it has also become known that Ripple donated $29 million of its digital currency to support U.S. public schools. The money that was donated via the crowdfunding site DonorsChoose.org will be allocated for purchasing classroom materials for more than 28,000 public school teachers across all 50 states.
But it is still not the end of good news from Ripple. Together with other 30+ companies, Ripple has joined Hyperledger blockchain consortium. It is an open source collaborative group of companies that are working on development of cross-industry blockchain technologies in such spheres as banking, finance, Internet of Things, manufacturing, supply chain, etc. This partnership will give Ripple an opportunity to open access for developers to their Interledger Protocol that previously was operable only in JavaScript
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