On Wednesday (June 22), FinTech announced that Ripple will open its first office in Canada, “a key design center.”
This office in Toronto, Ontario will initially have 50 engineers, but the goal is to “expand into hundreds of blockchain software engineers, including applied machine learning researchers, data scientists, and product managers.”
Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripplen, said:
“Krypto and the blockchain offer engineers an incredible opportunity to solve difficult problems, and these solutions can affect the movement of value around the world. Almost every financial institution is planning its cryptographic strategy to leverage this technology to support our future global financial systems.
“Krypto is one of the most exciting areas to work with, so it’s no surprise that talent is leaving established technology players and traditional financial industries here. We will continue to scale and invest in our business by expanding our global presence with our first office in Toronto.“
Ripplen blog post Ripple pointed out that over the past year, Ripple has “opened new offices in key cities such as Miami and Dublin” and plans to “hire hundreds of people worldwide by 2022”.
Devraj Varadhan, Ripplen’s Director of Design, added:
“At Ripple, we are a team builder who builds breakthrough solutions to open up greater financial opportunities for everyone and everywhere, creating an exciting atmosphere. We are excited to leverage Toronto’s technical capabilities and build builders to meet unmet customer needs on behalf of global customers – our teams here play a key role in driving Ripple’s innovations from blockchain protocol development and distributed applications to machine learning and payment solutions.“
And John Tory, the mayor of the city of Toronto, said:
“I am thrilled that Ripple is rooted in Toronto, where we know the company can benefit from the region’s highly educated technical capabilities, thriving ecosystem and competitive economic benefits. Ripple’s world-renowned, innovative technology and primary attitude fit perfectly into Toronto’s diverse, entrepreneurial and committed spirit.“
On April 26, Ripple’s CEO spoke about his company’s legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which claims $ XRP is an unregistered security – and how $ XRP is being used outside the United States.
As you may recall, on December 22, 2020, the SEC announced that it had filed a lawsuit against Ripple Labs Inc. and two of its executives, who are also significant holders of securities, alleging that they raised more than $ 1.3 billion through an unregistered, ongoing offer of digital assets. In essence, the SEC argues that XRP is a security under U.S. federal securities law.
Garlinghouse spoke about this during the trial to interview Bloomberg on Bloomberg Crypto TV.
When asked how Garlinghouse progressed, he replied:
“The reason why the Twitter crypto community cares so much about this issue is not just Ripple – this decision affects the whole industry.
“The irony is [that] the only country on the planet that considers XRP safe is the United States… It has gone well… The SEC estimates that progress has been slow. Typically, in these situations, when the SEC brings a case, they want to act quickly. They have dragged their feet.
“Gary Gensler recently publicly stated that a delay in justice is a denial of justice, and unfortunately justice is being delayed here by the SEC’s ongoing efforts to push things out.“
The interviewer then told Ripple’s CEO that Bloomberg’s dispute analysts believe the SEC will eventually win the lawsuit, and asked how Ripple would react if that prediction came true.
He answered:
“I think the Howey test will be stretched into the unknown again … So the idea that the XRP we use as a currency is a security is, I think, just misleading.
“But look, unfortunately Ripple is already operating in a world where it’s like we’re lost, right? So in the US, XRP has all the intentions and intentions, there is no liquidity. It has been halted and frozen on most U.S. stock exchanges.
“Nevertheless, Ripple had a record year last year. We continued to grow very fast in our key product groups. Even Q1 was a record for us. Unfortunately, that growth now comes almost entirely from outside the U.S., and we’re hiring more and more people from outside the U.S., but our clientele now has about 95% of non-U.S. Payment companies.“
Ripple’s CEO was also asked how non-U.S. Customers use XRP for digital assets.
He answered:
“Demand for our core product, which uses XRP to facilitate these cross-border payments, increased 8X year-over-year. So from the first quarter of last year to the first quarter of this year, it grew 8X, and it’s already a base, measured in billions. So from our point of view, demand has skyrocketed.“
Image credit
Recommended image author “jplenio”Through Pixabay.com
h/t – CryptoGlobe