In brief
- Anchorage has added XRP functionality to its vault for institutional custody.
- Anchorage is a member of two prominent digital currency alliances, Facebook's Libra Association and Celo's Alliance for Prosperity.
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In the past year, digital asset custodian Anchorage has joined two notable alliances seeking to remake the world’s banking system: Facebook’s Libra Association and Celo’s Alliance for Prosperity. And while each of those alliances are associated with their own stablecoins, Anchorage is hedging its bets that in the meantime there’s room for other global payment solutions.
Anchorage, which has been backed by Visa and Andreessen Horowitz, today announced it has added support for Ripple’s XRP. The company said it will help “an ecosystem of institutions that hold XRP” protect and use their funds with its institutional custody service.
“Since launching, Anchorage has aimed to support every digital asset that meets our standards of quality and security, such as XRP,” Anchorage co-founder and president Diogo Monica told Decrypt. “As a leading cryptocurrency for global payments and remittances, XRP is attractive to many institutional investors.”
Anchorage’s addition makes sense considering the firm behind XRP, Ripple, continues to partner with major cross-border payment companies, including Azimo in the Philippines and Intermex and MoneyGram in the US-Mexico corridor, where, according to Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, $54 million in XRP was sent between the US and Mexico alone in just the first week of February.
Anchorage, then, might just give institutions a safe place to park their XRP, which ranks fourth among cryptocurrencies in reported market cap at more than $5 billion.
To integrate the cryptocurrency, Anchorage worked with resources from Xpring, Ripple’s developer platform. The custodian also said it may add functionality for more advanced XRP functions like “payment channels,” which allow users to send asynchronous payments that are settled later.
As for the future of Anchorage, including its plans to help Facebook develop Libra, Monica said it’s working with blockchain developers to develop new solutions without interfering with their decisions. “From collaborating with Xpring, XRP’s native blockchain, to [supporting] XRP, to participating in the Libra Association and the Celo Alliance, Anchorage is committed to playing its part in improving global finance and banking the unbanked.”