$XRP: RippleNet General Manager: ‘We Have Bigger Ambitions Than Replacing SWIFT’

Recently, Asheesh Birla, General Manager of RippleNet, at Californian FinTech firm Ripple, spoke to journalist Kathy Chu, who is currently Senior Crypto Correspondent at news organization TruthDAO.

During this interview, which was released last Thursday (May 26), the RippleNet GM made a number of interesting comments. Below are a few highlights.

On U.S. SEC’s Lawsuit Against Ripple Labs

“I think… the entire crypto industry is looking at this case to set precedence. So, I think it’s not important just for Ripple. I think it’s important for the entire crypto industry…

“In terms of how it’s impacted us, we are coming off of record growth in our business and in RippleNet, the division that I run, which provides enterprise crypto solutions for financial institutions and corporates, is doing really well. I mean, we’ve had a banner year. We’re doing a run rate of over $15 billion for our payments business alone.

“So, I think that in terms of how it’s affected us, we’re resilient as a company. We’ve been doing this a long time, and these little bumps in the road aren’t going to deter us from our goal. And again, I’m just really happy that the team, our customers, they’re seeing a lot of value in what we’re building, so much so that they are double downing on our product and continuing to help us grow as a company, which I think also helps the industry as a whole as well...”

“As of right now, the judge has outlined a schedule, and the earliest that we would see something in terms of a summary judgement… would be early 2023. So, we got a schedule. I think that’s good news. I think the judge has been doing a job managing the case. A lot of the little battles that have been going on day to day, I think we’ve come ahead on a number of those battles… but at least we got some clarity that things would be wrapping up in 2023, at least from her perspective…“

On Replacing SWIFT

“I think we have bigger ambitions than replacing SWIFT. So remember, to move money internationally, there’s two components. There’s a messaging component, but then you actually have to move the funds. That’s not what SWIFT does. SWIFT only does the messaging…

“What was really really innovative about crypto and RippleNet is that we do both. We’ve modernised both. So, using SWIFT for messaging is like what’s happening using a fax machine today. So, we modernise that using APIs. It’s real-time. But then we also do the settlement. There’s not another solution out there that does both instantly like Ripple. And so, our solution is now a lot bigger than what SWIFT does.

“I think SWIFT is going be around for five years. It takes a long time to change like the entire banking system. I mean upgrading the mainframe at BNY Melon is probably a couple of hundred million dollars to do, to modernise that so that they can move off of SWIFT. So I think SWIFT is here to stay.

“I think the most innovative companies today are going to move off of SWIFT, and they’re going to use modern technologies like crypto and what we’re building at RippleNet ,and that’s really what’s helping us grow. There is really no other alternative to SWIFT that’s comprehensive and does more than the one that we built on top of crypto. So I’m excited about what’s was ahead for us.“

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Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.