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Building the Future of Financial Infrastructure with Blockchain and Digital Assets | Ripple
Ripple was founded on the belief that blockchain would become the global financial infrastructure of the future, enabling more accessible financial services for more people and businesses around the world. Early on, we bet on the promise of institutional DeFi to create a better, more equitable financial system, but at the time, cryptocurrency and blockchain largely lacked the infrastructure, liquidity, trust, and regulatory clarity needed for widespread institutional adoption. To put things into perspective, the price of bitcoin (BTC) was under $20, Ethereum didn’t exist yet, and there were only a handful of exchanges with a few million dollars in annual volume.
Fast forward 10+ years and the first BTC and ETH Spot ETFs have been approved in the US; BlackRock has launched its first tokenized fund issued on a public blockchain; the EU is implementing comprehensive cryptocurrency rules with MiCA; and financial institutions and payments companies like Fidelity, Itaú Unibanco, Stripe, and PayPal are making it easier for their customers to trade, hold, and use cryptocurrencies. It goes without saying that the cryptocurrency market has come a long way, as has the broader acceptance of cryptocurrencies.
As the industry and market continue to mature, Ripple has evolved alongside it to capture the opportunity before us. Having worked with financial institutions for many years, we have validated blockchain’s promise of faster, cheaper, and more reliable financial services in dozens of cases. However, they need a simple, reliable, and trusted digital asset infrastructure to integrate blockchain into their operations. Just as there are key components to running an internet-based business (storage, processing, networking, etc.), institutions need on- and off-ramps, custody, and liquidity.
With these building blocks, those building the financial services of the future can create, store, exchange, and move value around the world to solve the real and acute problems of today and imagine and invent the possibilities of tomorrow.
Evolution of the Ripple Product Suite
The first use case we tackled was cross-border paymentsleveraging the XRP Ledger (XRPL) and its native XRP digital asset to move value seamlessly. XRPL’s out-of-the-box capabilities—speed, low cost, transparency, and scalability—make it ideal for addressing the challenges inherent in legacy financial systems.
Payments was a perfect entry point, given its clear pain points (high fees, slow transfer times, lack of transparency and high error rates), based on decades-old technology. Today, our cross-border payments solution, Ripple PaymentsIt has near-global coverage with over 80 payment markets, representing over 90% coverage of the daily FX markets, processing over $50 billion in volume.
While we continue to see payments as the first (and most proven!) killer app for cryptocurrency, Ripple offers much more than payments today. We provide financial institutions with a simple, secure, and compliant digital asset infrastructure that significantly improves the way these customers create, store, exchange, and move value.
A significant step in making this future a reality was the Metaco Acquisition in 2023, a digital asset custody technology provider serving tier-one banks around the world, including BBVA Switzerland, HSBC, Societe Generale – FORGE and others. We are now better positioned than ever to deliver the product roadmap for our clients globally and, going forward, Metaco will be known as Ripple CustodyWe are continuing to expand our team and custody business, as well as opening a new office in Geneva (coming soon!) to manage our growing custody presence.
We have also decided to integrate our Liquidity Hub product into our payments solution, bringing the benefits of both offerings into one seamless experience. Ripple’s experience building a payments business and mastering how to provide liquidity to the right destination, at the right cost, at the right time has taught us a lot about liquidity management. We are applying the lessons learned from our experience to our customers’ experiences.
Building a Bridge Between TradFi and Crypto
Earlier this year, we announced our intention to launch a stablecoincalled Ripple USD (RLUSD) on the XRP Ledger and Ethereum blockchains. This is a significant milestone for Ripple’s business and an important next step in bridging the gap between traditional finance and cryptocurrency. Once Ripple USD is launched, we plan to integrate it into Ripple Payments, alongside XRP, to meet growing customer needs and evolving use cases in cross-border payments.
We have spent years building a solid global payment networkwhich allows customers to off-ramp funds to the destination and currency of their choice. Along with other stablecoins, Ripple USD will enable efficient on-ramps and facilitate fast, low-cost global payments for many Ripple Payments customers.
XRPL is the blockchain of choice for Institutional DeFi use cases due to its reliability, high performance, low transaction costs, and speed. Institutional DeFi requires high-quality stablecoins for on-ramping, trading, and more. Bringing trusted stablecoins to XRPL from compliance-minded companies unlocks new capabilities, use cases, and users for more DeFi developers. XRP is still the universal bridge asset for XRPL and is especially useful for creating liquidity for long-tail assets. For example, in regions where the cost of moving money across borders is particularly high due to a lack of liquidity between currencies, XRP remains the most efficient.
XRP Ledger: Built for Business
XRPL remains the primary blockchain that powers our products because it is fast, highly efficient, battle-tested, and supports large-scale use cases. Since 2012, it has processed over 2.8 billion transactions without a failure or security breach.
It also features a number of highly sophisticated financial tools built in at the protocol level, such as its native decentralized exchange (DEX). XRPL was the first blockchain to feature a built-in DEX, allowing users to offer and trade any type of token without intermediaries or centralized exchanges. Additional features (such as self-bridging AND find the path) allows users to find better deals by identifying transactions with multiple consecutive tokens.
Ripple, along with many projects like zonixx, Orchestra Finance, BelieveFi, Sologenic, Arcade and more, are developing applications on XRPL to move TradFi toward modern financial instruments. Over time, we see opportunities to integrate more of the technically and financially sophisticated capabilities of the XRP Ledger directly into Ripple’s business, bringing the benefits of decentralized finance to our customers around the world in a secure and compliant manner.
Cryptographic Building Blocks for the Enterprise
Ripple has proven its longevity by weathering the storms of every cryptocurrency bull and bear cycle. Since day one, we have taken a long-term view and have intentionally focused on working with financial institutions, regulators, and policy makers to transform the legacy system from the inside out.
Our ambition is to be the #1 digital asset infrastructure provider for financial services. We envision ourselves as a one-stop shop for companies that want the benefits of integrating blockchain into their business but don’t have the experience, resources, or appetite to build and maintain the technology in-house.
Ripple is one of the few players in the industry uniquely positioned to offer a holistic digital asset infrastructure that bridges TradFi and cryptocurrency through our years of experience living and working in both worlds. Ripple has the credibility, reputation, trust, advanced understanding and operations for core services such as crypto on and off-ramp, liquidity, custody and compliance. And we will continue to evolve our product suite to provide the solutions our customers want and need.
We started this business because we believe that blockchain technology and digital assets can provide faster, better and cheaper financial services than traditional technologies. We will continue to provide best-in-class solutions combined with innovative technologies to bridge the gap between TradFi and Web3 and make this vision a reality.
Contact our team to find out more and Start building your blockchain business today.