The bulls of Ripple (XRP) are struggling to get going again after media reports on June 30 claimed that Citigroup may reconsider its partnership with Metaco – a company Ripple Labs recently acquired for $250 million.
Bulls lose momentum
Ripple’s native token XRP has been stable for almost two months. It reached a high of $0.54 on multiple positive developments and industry expectations that the case with the SEC would end favorably.
However, momentum started to fizzle out in mid-June and the token fell to $0.31 on June 14 following the SEC’s crackdown on the crypto industry in the US through lawsuits against Binance.US and Coinbase.
Bulls managed to regain some of the momentum last week and were on track to reclaim the previous high of $0.54 before news from Citigroup led to a sharp sell-off, crashing the price to $0.42 , based on data from CryptoSlate.
Since then, the token has recovered somewhat to $0.47, as of this writing, but is struggling to move forward as the bears are now in control.
Citigroup will probably drop Metaco
Bloomberg News reported June 30 that Citigroup launched a review of its partnership with crypto custodian Metaco and could potentially replace the company as its provider.
People familiar with the matter told the newswire that the Wall Street giant was already on the hunt for a new provider. It is unclear whether the review is linked to Ripple, according to the report.
Citi group entered a partnership with Swiss-based Metaco in June 2022 and said the latter would help it “develop and test” digital asset custody capabilities.
The lender said at the time that it planned to integrate Metaco’s Harmonize platform into its own services to offer digital asset custody and settlement services to its clients.
The partnership also focused on developing tokenization and custody solutions for traditional assets such as securities.
Metaco also counts major European banks as partners, including Société Générale and BNP Paribas. The latter confirmed that the collaboration with Metaco remains “operational”.
Metaco, Ripple and Citigroup have not responded to a request for comment at the time of writing.
The post Ripple bulls losing all momentum amid reports of Citigroup reconsidering Metaco deal first appeared on CryptoSlate.