Incoming U.S. President Donald Trump is widely expected to be a positive catalyst for the crypto market, but his promises are already bumping business for locally-based crypto firms. Financial firm Ripple Labs, which offers payment rails and the RLUSD stablecoin using the XRP Ledger, is reporting a bump in local deals and hiring efforts ahead of Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20 — pinning growth on the upcoming administration’s campaign promises. “2025 is here and the Trump bull market is real,” CEO Brad Garlinghouse said in an X post late Sunday. “For Ripple, this is even more personal after Gensler's SEC effectively froze our business opportunities here at home for years. The optimism is obvious and very deserved.” “We signed more US deals in the last six weeks of 2024 (since the election) than the previous six MONTHS. Say what you want, but the “Trump effect” is already making crypto great again – through his campaign, and in the Administration’s day 1 priorities,” he added. Garlinghouse added that the company is now almost exclusively hiring in the United States, which is a shift from the company's expansion offshore during the previous Joe Biden administration. Ripple now has 75% of its open roles in the U.S., Garlinghouse said. As such, the firm is also donating to Trump's upcoming inauguration and has pledged $5 million worth of XRP tokens to the effort. Since November, the speculative optimism among traders has been that a crypto-friendly Trump administration could benefit tokens linked to U.S.-based companies, such as Ripple Labs (related to XRP) and Uniswap (UNI), as the firms are more involved in boosting value for token holders. XRP prices have increased more than 300% since Trump’s win, outperforming growth in all other major cryptocurrencies, mainly on the U.S. narrative. Traders from other countries are piling in, too. Last week, XRP surged more than 11% even as majors remained rangebound, led by $1.3 billion worth of trading volumes on Korea-focused exchange Upbit. A CoinDesk analysis previously flagged unusually high trading volumes for XRP stemming from South Korean exchanges, which has historically acted as a harbinger for price volatility with a bias to the upside. XRP was trading just above $2.40 during the Asian afternoon hours Monday, little-changed in the past 24 hours alongside the broader market.
