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The SBI Group is a well-known financial services company headquartered in Japan, with interest in various sectors. These sectors vary from biotechnology, environment, and energy to IT, life science, wireless and mobile technologies, and, of course — online finances. Due to Japan being one of the most crypto-friendly nations in the world, it is of no surprise that the SBI took an interest in the trend of digital currencies.
In fact, one of their best-known partnerships in the crypto space concerns two major crypto and blockchain-based firms, R3 and Ripple, among many others. And, while some of the Group's partnerships may seem random at first, they are actually strategic partnerships with some of the major players in every of the mentioned sectors.
SBI's Partnership With Ripple
Ripple is a US-based company with a goal to use its blockchain-based products to disrupt the financial sector and banking by providing better payment solutions. Their products — mainly xCurrent, xVia, and xRapid — provide nearly instant payments which are much cheaper and more practical, especially when it comes to making international payments.
The company has already established over 200 partnerships with different banks and financial institutions around the world, Many of these institutions have already joined the company's own network, RippleNet, which features high security and transparency, in addition to speed and low payment fees.
As such, it is of a small surprise that the company caught the attention of the SBI Group, with which it partnered to create a new venture — SBI Ripple Asia Co., Ltd. Together, the companies hope to create a new, blockchain-powered payment platform which can be used by financial institutions and banks in Asia. In addition, SBI Ripple Asia aims to also establish a new settlement platform which can be used by domestic and international clients. The project is likely to significantly cut down the cost of remittance, as well as the time necessary for the payments to be processed.
The joint venture has already released MoneyTap, which uses xCurrent to allow nearly instant payments to customers in Japan. The service is available at any given time of day or night.
SBI's Partnership With R3
R3 is an enterprise blockchain software firm which researches and further develops distributed ledger technology. The company also leads a consortium that includes more than 250 financial institutions in banks, all of which are interested in the DLT. The company was also involved in a legal dispute with Ripple, which ended on September 10th last year. Thanks to the mutual agreement, the SBI Group was able to establish a partnership with R3 as well.
The two created a joint venture as well, called SBI R3 Japan Co. Ltd, which was established only around 10 days ago, on January 28th.
As mentioned, R3 is involved with DLT technology's development and research, and one of their best-known products is an application called Corda. The app is an open-source blockchain-based project that allows the creation of new, interoperable blockchain networks. Thanks to the company's smart contract technology, these networks can also achieve a certain level of privacy.
One surprising recent announcement, given the company's history with Ripple, stated that Corda is preparing to go live and that it will use XRP for settling transactions.
Now, SBI Group aims to make use of the two firms and extend R3-Ripple solution across numerous sectors of the industry, which will speed up transactions, while any information stored on the blockchain will remain resilient to tampering and secure.
XRP Price And Behavior
The partnerships will not only disrupt traditional financial systems but all other industries as well, all with XRP as the main cryptocurrency. In light of these events, and due to the lack of any real competition, XRP is expected to surge and reach the heights that no one previously expected.
At the time of writing, the coin's price is at $0.28958 according to TradingView, with 1.29% increase in the last 24 hours.
The coin has seen a lot more volatility than usual in the last 7 days, although its price has been going down in the last week. The coin's support at $0.29668 was breached due to the bearish influence, although it did not go far below it.
However, broken support is now acting as a resistance that prevents XRP from surging back up. Without a stable bottom, XRP can go up or down in the near future, with no real way to tell which of the two might happen. However, it is likely that the price will continue to climb, as it is believed that the bearish grip with brought XRP below the support is losing in strength.
Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), XRP (Ripple), and EOS Price Analysis Watch (Feb 7th)
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