Bitstamp, one of the leading cryptocurrency exchange platform has started supporting Ripple. By including Ripple, the platform now supports two different cryptocurrencies.

The growing popularity of Bitcoin led to the creation of hundreds of altcoins. Among those, only a handful of them are quite popular and have a decent user base. Ripple is one of those popular altcoins, currently holding the third position in terms of market capitalization.

Bitstamp announced the inclusion of new crypto-asset in its latest blog post. The two Ripple trading pairs XRP/USD and XRP/EUR will be made available to Bitstamp users starting 17 January 2017. As an introductory offer, the cryptocurrency exchange has also decided to waiver trading fee for Ripple crypto-fiat pairs for a period of one month.

“After evaluating a number of digital currencies for inclusion on our exchange, it soon became clear that customer demand for XRP was particularly strong… Fortunately, Ripple and XRP also happen to be a good fit for the requirements of our EU license and so we are delighted to be able to respond to our customers’ needs in this way,” said the CEO of Bitstamp, Nejc Kodric.

Bitstamp users can start depositing XRP on Bitstamp from January 11, 2016. The zero fee offer for Ripple transactions will end on February 10, 2016, which will be followed by a reduced fee schedule until the end of April.

In addition to being a tradable crypto-asset, XRP is also used as a bridge currency for real-time settlement. Ripple currently has a total market capitalization of $234,878,718 at a price of $0.0065 per token. The inclusion of XRP on a licensed cryptocurrency exchange also gives Ripple a much-needed boost among the cryptocurrency community. Bitstamp holds the distinction of being the largest Bitcoin exchanges in EU, in terms of its trade volumes, and it may soon gain a similar distinction for its XRP offering as well.

Ref: Bitstamp Blog