Ripple (XRP) News Today: June 18

Ripple continues to strengthen its ecosystem by inking strategic deals, participating in major investments, and announcing important news.

Despite these positive developments and the solid institutional interest, XRP has dumped hard over the past several months and currently trades nearly 70% below its all-time high registered last summer.

All the Latest Stuff

Earlier this week, Gate.io (one of the leading cryptocurrency exchanges) added the XRP/RLUSD trading pair on its platform, thus embracing both of Ripple’s assets. The company’s native token is available on almost all major trading venues, while the stablecoin has also been on a tear lately.

Not long ago, Mastercard expanded its infrastructure to allow merchants and partners to settle transactions in various cryptocurrencies, including RLUSD. Other well-known entities that have enabled users’ access to the financial product include OKX, Binance, Kraken, and more.

Ripple also made a strategic investment in Flutterwave (a leading payments company in Africa), with the deal aiming to integrate RLUSD into the organization’s infrastructure.

The upgrade of the XRP Ledger has drawn attention, too. According to the X account BSCN, the underlying technology powering XRP will be improved to mitigate quantum computing risks and support the emerging AI economy.

Hollywood and Ripple

The company’s annual conference, Ripple Swell, which gathers leaders from traditional finance, the crypto world, and XRP enthusiasts, will take place in New York at the end of October.

This year, the event will be attended by one of Hollywood’s most popular actors, Matt Damon. The Oscar winner, who is a co-founder of Water.org, will tell participants how his organization is leveraging Ripple’s payment system and RLUSD to accelerate money movement and drive real-world impact across Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

The ETF Front

Institutional interest in XRP remains strong, with inflows into spot XRP ETFs continuing to surpass outflows. This indicates that pension funds, hedge funds, and other conservative investors keep increasing their exposure to the asset, thereby laying the groundwork for a potential price surge.

It is worth noting that spot BTC and ETH exchange-traded funds don’t enjoy the same investor interest and have been heavily bleeding in recent months.

XRP Price Outlook

Even with this progress, XRP has fallen by about 15% over the past month, mirroring the broader crypto market’s bearish trend. It currently trades at around $1.16, and some analysts believe a further decline could be on the way.

X user Sjuul | AltCryptoGems claimed that XRP is “again in trouble,” adding that if bulls don’t save the next support at $1, “things might get even more ugly.”

On the other hand, the whales’ activity suggests a rebound might come next. As CryptoPotato reported, wallets holding at least 1 million XRP have acquired more than 1.5 billion XRP in the last six months, indicating strong conviction and perhaps preparing for the next bull run.

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