In a Nov. 25 press release, MoneyGram announced that Ripple Labs Inc. has made a final $20 million equity investment in MoneyGram as part of Ripple’s original $50 million equity investment commitment.
Major money transmission network MoneyGram has announced that blockchain-based payments firmRipple has completed its original commitment with a final $20 million investment.
In June, the two companies entered into a 2-year-strategic partnership to collaborate in cross-border payments and foreign exchange settlements with digital assets. As part of the agreement, MoneyGram would be able to draw up to $50 million dollars from Ripple in exchange for equity.
A total investment of $50 million
MoneyGram will reportedly use Ripple’s xRapid liquidity product to allow for money to be sent in one currency and instantly settled in the destination currency. By using Ripple’s XRP token for such transfers, xRapid can purportedly settle such transactions faster than with fiat currencies or other major digital assets.
Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse commented on the latest investment:
«Last month, we announced that MoneyGram began using On-Demand Liquidity for payments to the Philippines, and we’re excited to support MoneyGram’s further expansion into Europe and Australia. Digital assets and blockchain technology have the potential to make a tremendous impact on cross-border payments – MoneyGram and Ripple is an example of that … In June, we announced this partnership, and it’s encouraging to see the rapid growth and benefits come to life.»
Ripple purchased the equity from MoneyGram at $4.10 per share and will now own reportedly 9.95% of MoneyGram’s common stock.
Majority of crypto will probably go to zero
At the beginning of November, Garlinghouse claimed that there are too many cryptocurrencies so far, forecasting that only 1% of the total are here to stay and that this small number of crypto projects will be game-changing and grow significantly in coming decades since they will be focused on solving real problems for real customers.
He hinted that very few will actually be able to meet customer needs, arguing that the vast majority of them “probably goes to zero.” He stated:
“Anytime there is a new market, there are a lot of people that run into that market and try to show that they can solve a problem, they can deliver a customer need.”
Ripple Engineers Publish Design for Private Transactions on XRP Ledger
A new proposal specification from Ripple’s software developers would allow users to send private transactions to one another using the XRP ledger.In a GitHub submission earlier this week, Ripple engineer Nik Bougalis said he and a group of other Ripple developers had designed a new private payment system for the XRP ledger to protect exchange users from malicious third parties.
Bougalis, who is responsible for XRP’s server software, said a system of «blinded tags» would make private transactions possible on the ledger. They would present a string of numbers that would be meaningful only for the intended recipient and appear random to everyone else.
«If blinded tags are in use, an attacker capable of observing every payment transaction will be unable to isolate a pair of transactions that refer to the same unblinded tag,» Bougalis said.
Cryptocurrency exchanges hold users’ XRP in the same wallet address, which is separated into various sub-wallets. To differentiate between the different holdings, sub-wallets use 32-bit source and destination tags to identify a transaction recipient.
At present, tags are publicly viewable and, if used frequently, can be associated with a particular user. Some exchanges already generate new tags for every transaction, but there are only a finite number of tags available. Although this isn’t an immediate issue, there comes a point where exchanges will be unable to generate any new tags.
Bougalis’ proposal would also mean users could toggle blinded tags on or off. They would work as a single function so the network doesn’t become overburdened.
Using blinded tags not only protects users’ identity, but it also acts as an effective «workaround» for preserving the number of destination and source tags available to exchanges, Bougalis added. As blinded tags leverage an existing tag infrastructure on exchanges, it’s uncertain whether users sending XRP between standalone wallets would be able to do so privately.
It was not immediately clear if Ripple intends to add blinded tags in the near future or if this is a more exploratory suggestion. CoinDesk approached Bougalis and Ripple for comment but had not received a response by the time we went to press.
