Ripple, a company that has been in existence since 2012, is intensifying its efforts to transform the global payments landscape. Simultaneously, the company is striving to establish itself as the preferred enterprise infrastructure provider, according to Monica Long, the company’s president, during her appearance on TechCrunch’s Chain Reaction podcast.
The XRP Ledger: A Decentralized Public Ledger
Monica Long clarified that the XRP Ledger is distinct from the Ripple network and protocol. The XRP Ledger is a decentralized public ledger with an open-source code base that anyone can contribute to or use. Thousands of developers worldwide are already utilizing this platform, she added.
Long explained that the original creators of the ledger envisioned it as a modern system for value movement that is as fast and as free as email. This system could potentially replace the traditional banking system with a blockchain-based decentralized exchange.
Blockchain: A Solution to Traditional Financial Institutions’ Problems
When the ledger was first launched in 2012, it was seen as a version of bitcoin that would achieve faster confirmation times with a lower cost system. The developers saw blockchain and a public ledger as an excellent way to represent, move, and transact value globally.
Blockchains are inherently transparent through on-chain data, which shows a transaction’s journey from start to finish. However, Long pointed out that the foreign exchange market is quite concentrated, with only a few players having enough capital to provide liquidity for transactions. This concentration leads to a lack of competitiveness in pricing.
Long believes that blockchain technology could solve problems that traditional financial institutions face using know your customer (KYC) and other compliance requirements through a decentralized environment. This could lead to more participants providing liquidity on these decentralized exchanges, resulting in a significant shift in the end and costs of these types of transactions.
The Future of Ripple and the XRP Ledger
The XRP Ledger has been “enterprise-grade” and is one of the few blockchains being used in enterprise applications. Ripple’s vision for 2024 and beyond is to become “that enterprise infrastructure provider,” offering features like on-and-off ramps, crypto liquidity, custody compliance, and more.
Long compared Ripple’s future offerings to Amazon’s AWS, but for crypto. The network is exploring how it can integrate payments and custodying. Its first significant acquisition in May 2023 was $250 million for Switzerland-based crypto custody firm Metaco, marking the evolution of their business.
