Last week, Trijo News could report that the Swedish crypto exchange BTCX is planning an initial public offering (IPO) as early as this summer. Now, there are reports that an American crypto giant also aims to get listed, Cointelegraph reports.
Behind the world’s third-biggest cryptocurrency
During a discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos in Switzerland yesterday, Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple (the company behind xrp, which is the world’s third-biggest cryptocurrency), hinted that an IPO could be underway this year.
“In the next twelve months, you’ll see IPOs in the cryptocurrency space. We’re not going to be the first and we’re not going to be the last, but I expect us to be on the leading side. It’s a natural evolution for our company”, he said according to Cointelegraph.
ICOs have dominated
If more crypto companies would get listed, this would be a somewhat unexpected development.
In the past, companies in the crypto industry have mainly focused on so-called initial coin offerings (ICO). You can read about how these work here.
Mixed IPO results for crypto companies
Whether IPOs are actually good for cryptocurrencies is currently unclear. For example, the cryptocurrency mining rig maker Canaan lost 40 percent of its value when it got listed. Another example of an IPO failure is mining giant Bitmain, which had to cancel its listing, according to Coindesk.
A more successful example is the Swedish crypto company Quickbit, which rallied after its listing last summer.
Anyway, Brad Garlinghouse’s statement has not led to any price rises for xrp. On the contrary, the cryptocurrency has fallen by about 4.5 percent since yesterday, according to numbers from Coinmarketcap.
