Ripple Acquires Iceland Crypto Firm, Expanding its European Operations

Ripple, a prominent name in the crypto space, seems on an acquisition spell. Yesterday, on September 30, 2019, it unveiled operations in Iceland by acquiring a cryptocurrency trading company Algrim for further expanding its Europe presence. With this move, the company will welcome a new engineer team as well. Ripple made the announcement to update its global community via an official blog post.

As the blog post highlights, this new Islandic team would play a crucial role in Ripple’s ODL (On-Demand Liquidity) product development that is going on. It uses XRP tokens for cross-border transactions. The company also disclosed that Iceland would prove to be an engineering hub for them as they intend to bring about more talent in the technical front in the area.

The post also noted Ripple’s SVP of Engineering, Christopher Kanaan, saying,

With built-in expertise in trading and exchanges, the addition of Algrim’s engineering talent to our team will be instrumental in continuing the momentum we’re already experiencing with On-Demand Liquidity.

Elaborating further, he said,

We’ve been committed to sourcing expert crypto and trading talent in key global markets since day one, and the acquisition of the Algrim engineering team is a successful example of doing just that.

It is important to note that the ex-Algrim team is headed by Dadi Armannsson, a seasoned industry expert and Algrim CEO. Algrim has built its cryptocurrency trading platform, for the last 2 years, which integrates more than 30 markets. Prior to it, the team was involved in developing conventional trading platforms, as well as foreign exchange trading algorithms, for a period spanning more than a decade, according to the blog post.

Armannsson termed the move of joining Ripple’s team as “a natural fit.” Explaining further, the CEO stated that both the firms have a shared vision of enabling blockchain technology and digital assets’ widespread adoption. Considering themselves as the huge XRP and XRP Ledger believers, Armannsson also added that they are keen to help develop “the future of payments at Ripple.”

For those who are unaware, Ripple acquired Logos in the past week, including eight engineers in its Xpring team. They will assist in developing DeFi (decentralized finance) system solutions built on XRP.

Earlier in the year, it entered into a collaboration with MoneyGram for allowing the latter to use its XRP-powered XRapid for global payments.