Ripple’s $5B Power Play Crashes Into Circle’s Brick Wall—Here’s Why
Another day, another crypto giant playing monopoly with investor money. Ripple just got its $5 billion acquisition offer swatted away by Circle like a fly at a stablecoin conference.
The deal that wasn’t:
Sources say Circle’s execs laughed all the way to their USDC reserves when Ripple came knocking. Too much regulatory baggage? Not enough synergy? Or just Jeremy Allaire’s allergy to XRP?
The real kicker:
This rejection drops during ’stablecoin summer’—when every fintech bro worth his Bitcoin maximalist tweets is scrambling for partnerships. Circle’s playing 4D chess while Ripple’s stuck explaining SEC lawsuits to potential acquirers.
One Wall Street analyst (who definitely isn’t shorting XRP) quipped: ’Turns out you can’t buy trust in the stablecoin game—even with five billion magic internet money tokens.’
Circle Refuses
The report claimed that the takeover attempt was halted in its tracks as Circle said the offer of somewhere between $4 billion and $5 billion was too low. Citing people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg said Ripple has no plans to raise the bid to acquire the company behind the second-biggest stablecoin, USDC.
In contrast, the US-based crypto giant completed the acquisition of Hidden Road, a prime brokerage company, for $1.2 billion earlier this year, in what was described as one of the largest deals in the industry. The move is expected to be a game-changer for XRP as the asset and the network behind it, XRPLedger, will be used for post-trade settlement on some transactions, as CEO Brad Garlinghouse confirmed.
Although the SEC is yet to publish an official confirmation and many believe it’s necessary to conclude the case, Galirnghouse announced in mid-March that the legal battle between his company and the US securities watchdog had come to an end as both parties refused to continue with their appeals.
It seems that Ripple’s concluding legal troubles in the US have opened the door for the company to make some big moves, albeit one of them was reportedly rejected.
RLUSD Struggles?
While it was stopped from taking over the second-biggest stablecoin issuer, Ripple has already entered that growing industry niche. Recall that the firm launched its own such product late last year, called RLUSD.
It started on the right foot after getting the regulatory green light in the US. Its market cap continued to increase in early April, jumping by 50% within days from $200 million to $300 million, as reported at the time.
However, its progress has stalled since, and the asset’s market capitalization has gained less than $20 million in the following several weeks. Nevertheless, the volumes on CEX have surged by 30% over the past day to over $50 million, according to CMC.
