Last week, the price of Ripple jumped sharply after a news report said that the company was planning to partner with SWIFT – the biggest provider of global financial messaging services. The member-owned cooperative plays an important role in the world economy with banks making use of its services. For example, with an interbank wire transfer, the corresponding bank will receive a message through the SWIFT network.
While news of a potential Ripple/SWIFT collaboration pushed the price of Ripple from $0.49 to a high of 0.53, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse made it very clear that no partnership would be taking place. On Bloomberg TV he explained how contrary to what SWIFT believes, blockchain and banking can go hand-in-hand confirming that at least 100 SWIFT-connected banks have signed on with Ripple.
“SWIFT said not that long ago they didn’t see blockchain as a solution to correspondent banking. We’ve got well over 100 of their customers saying they disagree. What we’re doing and executing on a day-by-day basis is, in fact, taking over SWIFT.”
Ripple is unlike other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Bitcoin was created to replace fiat currencies while ETH was created to help in the smart contract business. Ripple, on the other hand, was built to simplify international remittances. According to CoinMarketCap, Ripple is valued at $20 billion, making it the third biggest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Meanwhile, the price of Bitcoin has been on a freefall. In the past few days, the price has dropped from a high of $6510 to an intraday low of $6196. The BTC/USD pair’s exponential moving averages point to a continued decline for the pair. The RSI, which is at 44 indicates that the pair will likely continue moving lower. If it does, it will possibly test the psychologically-important level of 6000.
