Ripple, one of the fastest-growing companies in the cryptocurrency market, announced they purchased the Icelandic cryptocurrency trading firm Algrim. The main goal is to expand its presence in Europe by launching operations in Iceland.
Ripple Acquires Crypto Exchange in Iceland
Ripple, a leader in enterprise blockchain solutions and provider of cross-border payment products, announced it is acquiring a new company to expand its presence in Europe. According to an official press release published on September 30, the firm “acqui-hired” the crypto exchange Algrim.
This comes after the acquisition of Logos, a startup that develops payment solutions focused on speed and scalability. With this purchase, Ripple added eight engineers to the Xpring team that will be exploring new solutions for a decentralized finance (DeFi) system based on top of the XRP cryptocurrency.
The new team located in Iceland will play an integral role in the ongoing development of Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) product. This solution utilizes XRP in order to process cross-border payments between institutions. Iceland will eventually work as one of Ripple’s engineering hubs with plans to bring more technical talent to the region.
SVP of Engineering, Christopher Kanaan, explained:
“With built-in expertise in trading and exchanges, the addition of Algrim’s engineering talent to our team will be instrumental in continuing the momentum we’re already experiencing with On-Demand Liquidity.”
He went on saying that they’ve been committed to sourcing expert crypto and trading talent in different markets since they started operating. They consider the acquisition of the Algrim engineering team is an example of doing that.
Algrim has more than a decade worth of experience building and developing trading platforms. Dadi Armannsson is the CEO of the company. In the announcement, Armannsson explains they are big believers in XRP and the XRP Ledger and they are ready to help build the future of payments at Ripple.
Ripple wants to increase its presence in the European market after several years focusing on the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. Ripple is already working with over 200 financial companies around the world offering cross-border payment services to all of them through the Ripple Network.
There are also a dozen customers that are leveraging XRP in cross-border transactions. By using XRP, it is possible for companies to source liquidity on-demand between jurisdictions that do not have enough fiat liquidity.
XRP is currently the second-largest digital currency in the market. According to data provided by CoinMarketCap, XRP is being traded around $0.257 and it has a market capitalization of $11.08 billion.
A few days ago, UseTheBitcoin reported that Ripple added Shinhan Bank to its customer list. This bank is one of the largest in South Korea.
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