Ashton Kutcher shocked Ellen Degeneres when he donated $4 million-worth of Ripple to her wildlife charity. This gift is for her 60th birthday which happened live on “The Ellen Degeneres Show”. Ashton Kutcher said that “Usually people come out with the big, giant check and do the big giant check thing”. He added that “But… all we have to do is push this button and it’s in your account”.
Ellen Degeneres gratefully said, “I’d like to push it”. “I’d like to push it real good”.
Publicity Stunt?
Is this a publicity stunt by Ripple? Ashton Kutcher mentioned that “we found this company, and we thought it was really, really interesting” while talking about Ripple.
Ripple is known for partnering with high-profile companies such as American Express and MoneyGram. In addition to this, there are also banks that are interested in Ripple such as Swiss-based UBS and Spain’s Banco Santander. Ripple has been known for its cross-border transactions.
This isn’t the first time Ripple made use of this tactic in order to gain attention. In March this year, Ripple donated $29 million in order to develop US public schools.
There are cryptocurrencies and ICOs that used celebrities for promotion. In fact, Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao, and even Dennis Rodman are just some celebrities that have been involved in crypto-related projects lately.
Mass Adoption
But Ripple isn’t just about hype. There are companies that have decided to use the cryptocurrency as a mode of payment. Recently, Revolut added Ripple in its app which allows users to buy, hold, and sell the digital currency. In December 2017, London-based Revolut launched its crypto feature. The app allowed the users to change their fiat currency into cryptocurrency.
Initially, it was Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin that were added to the app. But now, the app also added Ripple and Bitcoin Cash to its users. The app also has 25 fiat currencies available for exchange. There is also a feature on the app that allows its users to be notified in case the cryptocurrency hits a particular value.
According to the co-founder and CTO of Revolut, Vlad Yatsenko: “We’ve been asking the Revolut community which cryptocurrencies they would like to see next, and the demand for both XRP and Bitcoin Cash has been absolutely overwhelming. After months of negotiations and development work, we’re incredibly excited to offer exposure to these two digital currencies to the UK market”.
This is big news for Ripple since Revolute has around 100,000 cryptocurrency transactions daily with a 1.5{4ede17fdd9b4ce8121d01fc4b54913fe84f8215aace504cc657695cefb5329ff} exchange fee.
And why not Ripple? Ripple is known for fast and cheap transaction fees. On the other hand, though Bitcoin is far more popular, it is known for slow transactions and high transaction fees.
In fact, Ripple was even rumored to becoming the official cryptocurrrency to be used by Amazon. And the reason behind this is the fact that Ripple has a large supply and therefore it isn’t as volatile as other cryptocurrencies.
Crypto Donations
Donations in form of cryptocurrencies are now becoming common. In fact, there is even a mosque that is now accepting both Bitcoin and Ethereum. And also, UNICEF Australia accepted donations in form of cryptocurrencies but via contribution of users’ computational power.
