San Francisco-based storage sharing company, Omni, announced on January 16th that it had accepted a major investment from Ripple in the company\'s native XRP coin. Tom McLeod, Omni\'s CEO, is betting heavily on the future of XRP, hoping it will increase in value over the long term. He sees the crypto investment as a way of bypassing traditional investment processes, although a regular venture capital company has also contributed a US dollar investment to the latest round of fund-raising.

In the third week of January this doesn\'t look like such a smart move, as XRP\'s price has dropped substantially from its New Year high of over $3, standing on January 17th at just over $1 – but the market is notoriously volatile, and McLeod may be justified in his confidence. The price of XRP stood at only $0.20 in the middle of December, when it went on a rampage over the holidays, finally reaching $3.80 on January 6th.

Some of the invested cryptocurrency will be used to pay freelancers and for employee bonuses. It will be an individual choice whether XRP payments will be accepted, but one PR agent representing Omni has already agreed to be paid in XRP.

XRP was designed to create liquidity for cross-border payments by financial institutions (including banks), and is the only cryptocurrency so used. This investment constitutes a departure from its normal usage, but McLeod hopes that enticing talent with such an incentive could have longer-term prospects than traditional financing.