Popular cryptocurrency XRP recently saw a strange but significant development in the Korean crypto investment landscape. Today, three of the largest crypto exchanges in South Korea – Coinone, Upbit and Bithumb – suddenly announced that XRP had just been renamed.
Actually, XRP is now the new name for the cryptocurrency that most of the crypto market used to call it. However, it seems that for the South Korean market, it was not XRP but Ripple coin until the recent change. It is understandable why people often confuse Ripple and XRP.
The XRP token was originally called “Ripple,” and the San Francisco-based company has crazy big holdings of the cryptocurrency, 37.43 billion XRP to be exact, which is equivalent to about $91 billion. On top of that, Jed McCaleb was a key figure in the creation of both Ripple and the XRP Ledger but later moved on to build Stellar (XLM).
Even the author of this article confused Ripple and XRP when he first started working at U.Today, for which he rightly received some explanation from the community of fans of this cryptocurrency.
But as you can see from South Korea, it is not that it is a misconception that XRP = Ripple, but rather that the old association is starting to be rectified.
Yes, the price action of cryptocurrencies still largely depends on the actions and news from the crypto company side. However, and as the SEC’s legal showdown against Ripple has shown, these are all separate entities, and one does not belong to the other.
It will be interesting to see how the community welcomes such changes from Korean platforms and if this trend will continue to other markets.
