Ripple - Looks To Set Foot In Southeast Asia (including Singapore)

Ripple, the company behind the third largest cryptocurrency, XRP is interested to expand their reach of cross-border payment service (through their permissioned Blockchain Technology [also known as private blockchain] called RippleNet) in Southeast Asia, particularly Singapore. For more details, check out the Business Insider article here. 

As I mentioned repeatedly in this blog, I foresee that Blockchain technology is here to stay and it will change the way the industry or consumers interact/connect with internet/people, for the better of course. Blokchain as a technology is still at its infancy and there are many fine-tuning along the way is unavoidable, the only thing I hope to see is more people to embrace and learn about this revolutionary technology, the earlier the better. After all, it has a big part to play in Singapore's vision to become a Smart Nation.

One thing worth mentioning is that, Ripple or XRP, as a cryptocurrency has been detested by majority of the blockchain/crypto purist because of its permission-based blockchain as well as huge ownership of the crypto supply by the company i.e. deemed as centrally controlled. To them, this is contradicting to the original purpose of Blockchain technology, which is decentralization.

Personally, I have no objection to all their arguments but I do still see a bright future of Ripple (as a company as well cryptocurrency). My rationale is that because Ripple's main target market is institutions (especially the financial institutions) which has a very strict rules and regulations to adhere to (KYC, AML, PDPA, just to name a few), they will be more open to work with an established company like Ripple* to reap the benefits of Blockchain and at the same time retain some form of control/privacy through their permissioned Blockchain.  

*Ripple was established in 2013 and already has a string of existing financial institutions/banks working with them.

Cheers!

Exchanges that I am currently using to trade cryptocurrencies: