Japanese Crypto Lending Service Adds $XRP as Its Adoption Grows Outside US

A Japanese cryptocurrency lending service operated by FuelHash, a cryptocurrency services company launched by Katsuya Konno, a former Softbank and Liquid Exchange executive, has launched an $XRP lending service.

As first pointed out by popular cryptocurrency influencer Sentosumosaba on the microblogging platform Twitter, the cryptocurrency is joining others in the lending program including stablecoins $USDC and $USDT, and top cryptocurrencies like $BTC, $ETH, $ETC, and $BNB.

The addition of $XRP to the lending service comes months after various cryptocurrency lending platforms, including BlockFi and Celsius Network, filed for bankruptcy amid the bear market that affected the space.

Lending platforms follow a business model akin to consumer banks. They gather deposits from customers and lend the funds to institutional borrowers, such as market makers, for a set period. The platforms earn a percentage of the interest on those loans as fees, while the depositors receive the remainder of the interest.

For Fuelhash, deposited $XRP can be lent for between 60 and 90 days, with an annual percentage yield between 1% and 1.5% for its users. A minimum of 100 tokens are required for the service to be used.

While XRP’s adoption dropped in the US after several cryptocurrency exchanges delisted it in the wake of a lawsuit from the  U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) against Ripple, it has been growing outside of it.

As CryptoGlobe reported, Japanese financial services giant SBI Holdings has given its shareholders the option of receiving $XRP as a benefit for the third year in a row in 2022, further showing the firm’s support for the embattled cryptocurrency.

The firm first started offering shareholders XRP benefits in 2019. SBI Holdings has a history of working with Ripple, the largest player in the XRP market, including their joint venture SBI Ripple Asia in 2016 to promote the use of XRP.

SBI has launched in 2021 a cryptoasset fund that invests in XRP and four other popular cryptoassets: BTC, ETH, BCH, and LTC. At the time Tomoya Asakura, the President of SBI affiliate Morningstar Japan K.K., revealed the fund would require an investment of at least 1 million yen ($8,400).

SBI Holdings has also launched a new cryptocurrency lending service allowing users to earn an annual interest rate of 1% on their bitcoin holdings, with plans to expand the service to ETH and XRP. 

Meanwhile, Bill Morgan, who is qualified to practice law in both the UK and Australia, has suggested that the price of $XRP could explode upward if the SEC’s lawsuit against ripple has a “positive outcome.”

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