Forget Bitcoin, it’s time to party with Ripple; Renren plans ICO

( Photo: Shutterstock ) The company that purchased Trucker Path last week is now looking to raise funds through an ICO. Renren released a white paper on Tuesday detailing its plan and by the close of the markets Wednesday its stock price had increased over 47% to $18.32 a share. It had settled back to $15.19 by the close of the markets on Thursday. The white paper described its plans for an “open social network platform based on blockchain” called RRCoin. The Chinese government banned ICOs last year and blocked the company from releasing an ICO in September. Renren was established in 2005 and was one of the first social networking sites in China. Recently, however, it has fallen out of favor with the Chinese public who now prefer other social media sites such as Weibo and WeChat. It is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Earlier this year Trucker Path joined the Blockchain in Transport Alliance (BiTA). BiTA is a standard setting body for the adoption of rules of the road for blockchain technology in the transportation industry. The new owners of Trucker Path seem bullish on the company’s decision to join. “Currently, the two major emerging technology areas are artificial intelligence and blockchain,” says Joseph Chen, chairman and CEO of Renren. “With the acquisition of the Trucker Path social platform and the Truckloads freight marketplace, the company will be well-positioned technologically to drive innovation within this important industry.” Bitcoin is so last week. There is a new cryptocurrency taking the world by storm. Sound familiar? (Please see our Bitcoin article from three weeks ago linked here.) It is called Ripple and no, it’s not what Fred Sanford used to drink. Ripple (XRP), in the usual crypto fashion, shot up in value and created a bunch of millionaires overnight. The currency is up over 1,000% in the last month alone and hit a high of $3.84 on Wednesday. In fact, this currency has even minted some billionaires in the last week. This move in price has put the co-founder and executive chairman of the company ahead of Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, and both Larry Page and Sergey Brin from Google. In fact, it makes him the fifth richest person in the world on paper with a net worth of $59.9 billion. Again, that’s on paper. The coin grew 35,500 percent to $2.30 in 2017 which is by far the highest growth of any cryptocurrency. Its current market value is around $235.4 billion which is second only to Bitcoin in the crypto world. Since its beginning Ripple has been focused on becoming the cryptocurrency for the financial world. In October of 20017, Ripple announced that it has a network of 100 financial institutions signed onto its network. The company has explicitly targeted financial services institutions since its inception and has presumably created its entire platform with those customers in mind. The cryptocurrency world is now doing the same volumes as the New York Stock Exchange, so where is the transports section? Companies such as Shipchain have done something similar to Ripple but for the supply chain management industry and is currently in an ICO presale. And there are other logistics ICOs that have launched or are looking to come public. We’ll see if they taste as good as Ripple. Stay up-to-date with the latest commentary and insights on FreightTech and the impact to the markets by subscribing.