XRP and LINK Prices Slide Despite Partnership; Crypto Gambler's Ambitious $42B Bitcoin Plan

The blockchain oracle provided Chainlink and the US fintech company Ripple have teamed up to hasten the uptake of Ripple USD, the stablecoin of the cross-border payments company.

“Enterprise-grade, USD-denominated stablecoin created with trust, utility, and compliance at its core” is how Ripple characterizes its new stablecoin.

Another Stablecoin Enters Crowded Market

Chainlink’s price oracle feeds will make real-time pricing information for RLUSD on Ethereum available, allowing DeFi applications to use the stablecoin for lending, trading, and other purposes.

.@Ripple x @Chainlink: $RLUSD has adopted the Chainlink standard for verifiable data to fuel DeFi adoption with real-time, secure pricing data.

The future of stablecoins is here: https://t.co/mq3cThLGQJ pic.twitter.com/993Ac0o282

— Ripple (@Ripple) January 7, 2025

The issuance of RLUSD for the Ethereum and XRP Ledger blockchains makes it inherently compatible with DeFi and smart contract applications.

With a 65% market share, Tether dominates the crowded stablecoin industry that RLUSD is joining.

According to CoinGecko, which includes 232 stablecoins or pegged token variants, the total stablecoin market capitalization is at a record high of almost $212 billion, or about 6% of the whole crypto asset market.

XRP and LINK Slide

The announcement did not affect the pair’s respective tokens, which suffered during Tuesday’s general market decline reported by Crypto Potato.

As of this writing, Ripple’s XRP has dropped 6.4% on the day, from $2.45 to $2.28. Nevertheless, the cross-border token has risen 340% in the last three months and is still up 6.6% over the last week.

This week marks seven years since XRP’s peak price of $3.40, which is still about 34% lower.

As the market correction severely battered altcoins, Chainlink’s LINK suffered a massive 11.7% decline, dropping from $23.50 to $20.5 at the time of writing. In mid-December, LINK reached a three-year high of $30, but it hasn’t been able to recoup and is still 59% behind its May all-time high of $52.70.

Crypto gambler raises stakes

Beginning in 2025, MicroStrategy (NASDAQ: MSTR) launched what may have been the most ambitious financial engineering plan in the company’s history.

Michael Saylor and his associates announced plans to raise up to $2 billion through preferred stock offerings on January 3, pushing the limits of financial credulity. This is the latest step in what they brashly refer to as their “21/21 Plan,” an almost unimaginable plan to raise $42 billion over three years to purchase (even more) Bitcoin.

The scale and numbers are so enormous that they nearly defy reality.

Even though its quarterly revenue was only $116.1 million, down 10.3% from the previous year, the company now intends to raise more money than many Fortune 500 corporations put together.

The most recent capital raise from MicroStrategy alone is almost 20 times its quarterly sales, and this comes from a company whose primary software business is dying while it evolves into what is unquestionably the most leveraged Bitcoin wager in corporate history.

As recently as November, MicroStrategy deployed $2.03 billion to buy 27,200 Bitcoin at an average price of $74,463 per Bitcoin, and at the same time, executed a $3 billion issue of zero-coupon convertible notes due 2029 at a 55% conversion premium. You can read it in detail here.