Ripple hires former Bloomberg journalist as chief market strategist

Ripple company announced that journalist Cory Johnson has been hired as chief market strategist. Johnson will work closely with the rest of the executive team to help manage the company's growth.

Cory will be working closely with Ron Will the chief financial officer of Ripple. His job will be to explain Ripple and its cryptocoin XRP (Ripple) to investors and regulators.

Cory Johnson

Johnson has a distinguished career as a journalist. At one time he was the Silicon Valley correspondent for CNBC news. Recently he co-hosted Bloomberg West with Emily Chang in discussions of the tech sector. Johnson also covers Internet companies, social media, cloud computing and various other subjects in technology, media, and entertainment.

Before starting work with Bloomberg in 2010 Johnson worked as a hedge fund manager and a private investor. He worked for Kingsford Capital Management and also for Cannell Capital LLC. As an analyst for Cannell he focused on value investing, short selling, forensic accounting. As a journalist he also has covered sports, and organized crime.

Johnson has also helped create several magazines. He served as editor of SLAM magazine. and helped create Vibe magazine. He also created a daily national radio show on Sirius XM called "Bloomberg Markets".

Johnson on Ripple, the blockchain, and cryptocurrency

Johnson said that he believed in Ripple and believed that the technology involved was real and revolutionary. However, he also said: "But I am also convinced that a lot of blockchain-related companies and crypto projects are exaggerated. This space is confusing and over-hyped."

Johnson said his role was to help investors, financial institutions, and regulators understand how XRP fits within the market but also the impact the crypto and blockchain technology will have in the future.

Cory on regulation

Cory unlike some in the area sees regulation as positive. He claims more investor protection is needed in the area and cannot happen too fast. He was hopeful that regulators would see real use for digital assets.

In particular, Cory sees blockchain technology as key to improving the banking system and providing a much improved payments system. He thinks that there has been too much emphasis on the price of cryptocoins rather than on the differences between digital assets and the companies that use them.

Ripple's wild price fluctuations

The price of XRP the Ripple coin has fluctuated wildly this year. It had a high of $3.84 in January but was priced at a mere 83 cents on Thursday. As of about 20:00 UTC on Saturday the price had fallen even further at 78.4 cents.

The price had spiked on more than one occasion as there were reports that turned out to be just rumours indicating the Coinbase exchange would trade Ripple. One spike was reported on in a recent Digital Journal article.

Ripple is in a unique cash position

Ripple (XRP) is not mined. There are 55 billion XRP in an escrow account and every month Ripple the company sells a small fraction of that horde. In the fourth quarter of 2017 sales brought in $91.6 million.

Johnson would not say if part of his compensation was in XRP.

The RippleNet platform is already being adopted by some financial institutions

The Ripple website boasts: "Ripple connects banks, payment providers, digital asset exchanges and corporates via RippleNet to provide one frictionless experience to send money globally."

The company claims that the RippleNet platform is already being used by more than 100 banks and that a group of Japanese banks is also testing the system. RBC, Bank of America and UBS are also said to be involved.

A recent article adds: "XRP has started to gain some adoption of late. MoneyGram announced earlier this year that it's testing Ripple's xRapid technology and XRP currency for cross-border payments, and shortly after that Ripple said IDC Corporation and Mercury FX will use xRapid "to settle remittances and corporate transactions quickly.""

Previously published in Digital Journal