Report: Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of Ripple, has hinted at future
mergers and acquisitions
During his visit to the World Economic Forum (WEF) event in Davos, Ripple Labs CEO Brad Garlinghouse outlined the company's development potential, as well as possible mergers and acquisitions, despite the crypto economy's collapse.
Ripple Labs chief Brad Garlinghouse recently told a media outlet during the WEF conference in Davos that the company had "a very robust cash sheet." Ripple Labs may participate in merger and acquisition (M&A) agreements, according to Garlinghouse, and Ripple Labs will be the buyer. "I think we're now at a level of growth where we're more likely to be the buyer than the... seller," Garlinghouse told the media outlet. Garlinghouse also predicted that the blockchain business will witness more mergers and acquisitions. During his interview, Garlinghouse stated, "I believe there will be an upsurge in M&A in the blockchain and crypto industry." "That's something we haven't seen yet." But I believe that will happen in the future. And I'm sure we'll consider things like that as the circumstance progresses."
Several purchases were made in the crypto industry in the second half of 2021 and the first quarter of 2022. For example, Coinbase bought Fairx Exchange in January 2022, while Opensea bought Dharma Labs in the same month. Consensys, an ethereum software business, announced the purchase of the Mycrypto wallet in February. The fractional investment firm Public announced the purchase of the digital antiquities and non-fungible token (NFT) technology business Otis the next month, in March.
Bolt, a payment and shopper network, bought Wyre for $1.5 billion in April. Huobi Global also announced the acquisition of Bitex, a Latin American crypto exchange, at the end of May. The Ripple Labs CEO's comments at Davos come after billionaire and FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried talked about spending billions on mergers and acquisitions. "There's a lot of space for development in crypto," Garlinghouse said in Davos, "and we're exploring a number of potential niches for it."
Meanwhile, among the more than 13,400 crypto assets in circulation today, XRP has the sixth-largest market value. XRP, on the other hand, has lost 59.2 percent versus the US dollar this year, and 34 percent in the last 30 days. Also, unlike many other digital assets, XRP did not reach an ATH seven months ago, in November 2021. Following the 2017 crypto bull run, XRP's last reported ATH occurred on January 7, 2018, more than four years ago. Since then, XRP has lost more than 88 percent of its value, accounting for 1.49 percent of the $1.28 trillion in value of the whole crypto ecosystem.
