remains unmoved as the market once again has been hit with speculations about Ripple's initial public offering (IPO).
At pixel time (08:58 UTC), XRP, ranked 3rd by market capitalization, trades at c. USD 0.22 and is down almost 4% in the past 24 hours and 6% in a week, while all other major coins are also in red today.
Today, the market speculates that Ripple, an American blockchain company focusing on payments technologies, may have an IPO planned for this year.
There are reports going about the Cryptoverse that Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, confirmed, or at the very least implied, that this will be the case, during an interview at the World Economic Forum at Davos.
Though there are no interviews available to be seen yet, the reports seems to have originated from a tweet by the Senior Vice President of Product Management at Ripple, Asheesh Birla. He seems to imply that this is the case as well by quoting Garlinghouse's alleged words.
“In the next 12 months, you’ll see IPOs in the crypto/blockchain space. We’re not going to be the first and we’re not going to be the last, but I expect us to be on the leading side… it’s a natural evolution for our company.” -@bgarlinghouse at #WEF20
— Asheesh Birla (@ashgoblue) January 23, 2020
No further details were provided. At the time of writing, Ripple hasn't replied to our request for comment.
In either case, this wouldn't be the first time Garlinghouse talked about an IPO. Back in September 2017, in an interview with CNBC, the CEO was asked about the pros and cons of a Ripple IPO, and the answer was: "It’s a flattering question to get. I want to make sure we have the right managerial maturity, infrastructure, and ability to forecast properly." He added: "We’ve been around for 4.5 years. At some point it will make sense. Just not today." Additionally, in 2018 as well, people online were speculating if a Ripple IPO is coming.
Meanwhile, in December 2019, Ripple USD 200 million in Series C funding from a group of notable investors.
Why is an IPO important? IPO basically means "going public." It's a major process via which a privately held company issues shares of stock to the public for the first time, and that privately owned business becomes co-owned by public stockholders. While changing who manages and controls the company, an IPO also opens the doors to the public capital, and may in fact bring more exposure and credibility to that company - in this case Ripple. Ripple would likely be welcoming more institutional investors and expanding its offerings, such as the On Demand Liquidity (ODL) payment solution, while XRP could benefit from it as well if seen by stock investors as a potential investment. It's a long process and it requires a permission by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to sell stock to the public.
