According to Bloomberg, Ripple attempted to provide financial incentives to exchanges Gemini and Coinbase for its XRP cryptocurrency to be listed; Some believe that the exchanges are reluctant to include XRP because the token could be deemed securities because it is controlled by one single company; the article by Bloomberg shares that a Ripple executive offered a $1 million cash payment to Gemini which was followed by other incentive offerings; Ripple also offered lending Coinbase $100 million of XRP to let users trade the asset. Source
As the CBOE bitcoin futures product goes live there are lingering questions with the exchange where they will base their pricing; Gemini is run by the Winklevoss twins but has had a number of issues including low volumes and system outages; Gemeni is currently ranked 14th according to CoinMarketCap; while well connected because of the Winklevoss twins critics worry they can be potential targets for price manipulation; as the futures market goes live there will be a lot of interest to see how this plays outs. Source.