Ripple Hires Key Player at Google

 Ripple just convinced a lead product manager at Google to leave the tech giant and enter the world of blockchain. Amir Sarhangi, who was responsible for the launch of Google's wireless messaging system called RCS, has been hired as Ripple's new vice president of products, Reuters reports. "Sarhangi joined Google through its acquisition in 2015 of Jibe Mobile, a startup he founded and led that developed technology for wireless carriers to adopt RCS. The standard is seen as a successor to SMS texting as it better handles sending multimedia and commercial messages, such as receipts and airline boarding passes, over cell networks." Sarhangi will lead Ripple's push to expand RippleNet, a network of banks and financial institutions using Ripple's technology to power cross-border payments. Meanwhile, the digital asset XRP has just been added to two new crypto exchanges. The Brazilian exchange OmniTrade says XRP is up and running. XRP is paired with the Brazilian real, Bitcoin and Ethereum. XRP is also now on Yobit, paired with Bitcoin and Ethereum.