{"id":39814,"date":"2025-07-31T17:01:37","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T17:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=39814"},"modified":"2025-07-31T17:01:37","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T17:01:37","slug":"ripple-cto-explains-why-xrp-ledger-lags-despite-300-bank-deals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=39814","title":{"rendered":"Ripple CTO Explains Why XRP Ledger Lags Despite 300+ Bank Deals"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Ripple chief technology officer David \u201cJoelKatz\u201d Schwartz moved to explain the gap between Ripple\u2019s oft-touted roster of bank relationships and the still-modest on-chain activity on the XRP Ledger (XRPL), responding at length on July 30 to a widely shared thread of questions from investor and YouTuber Andrei Jikh. In a series of posts on X, Schwartz pointed to compliance realities, institutional behavior, and product roadmap items\u2014most notably a forthcoming \u201cpermissioned domains\u201d model\u2014as key reasons that institutional flows remain largely off-chain today.<\/p>\n

300+ Bank Deals, Little Volume? Ripple CTO Answers<\/h2>\n

Jikh\u2019s prompt captured long-standing critiques: after more than a decade and \u201c300+ bank partnerships,\u201d why isn\u2019t the XRPL clearing \u201cbillions in daily on-chain volume,\u201d why would payers choose a volatile asset like XRP over stablecoins, and\u2014in a world saturated with fiat-linked tokens\u2014do bridge assets still matter? He also raised questions about tokenization strategy, including why a firm such as BlackRock<\/a> would select XRPL rather than operate a captive chain, and about geopolitical risk for non-US users.<\/p>\n

Schwartz\u2019s central explanation<\/a> for sluggish on-chain settlement was blunt about the constraints facing regulated entities that cannot unknowingly transact against illicit counterparties on public DEX liquidity: \u201cEven Ripple can\u2019t use the XRPL DEX for payments yet because we can\u2019t be sure a terrorist won\u2019t provide the liquidity for payment. Features like permissioned domains will address this.\u201d The post acknowledged \u201cit has been very slow\u201d to shift institutional flows on chain, even as he argued that institutions are \u201cstarting to see the benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pressed by another user on whether the same counterparty-risk problem exists on other L1s, Schwartz said that, depending on how features are used, \u201cgenerally decentralized exchanges on public layer 1\u2019s don\u2019t give you any control or knowledge of who your counterparties are.\u201d The point was procedural rather than moral\u2014\u201cregulations aren\u2019t always totally logical,\u201d he added\u2014underscoring why regulated payment flows have struggled to route through open liquidity.<\/p>\n

Schwartz framed \u201cpermissioned domains<\/a>\u201d as a design intended to keep the ledger\u2019s openness while giving compliance-bound participants a venue with rule-enforced counterparties. In follow-ups, he described a structure in which \u201cretail is welcome in the permissioned parts provided they can prove they\u2019re not sanctioned,\u201d and said the \u201cnet effect\u201d should be that liquidity in these domains remains comparable to the open side because of market-making between the two.<\/p>\n

XRP Vs. Stablecoins<\/h2>\n

On the stablecoin question, Schwartz rejected the idea that XRP\u2019s volatility automatically disqualifies it for payments. He argued there are use cases where volatility \u201cisn\u2019t a minus, or is even a plus,\u201d and\u2014separately\u2014contended that a functioning bridge requires inventory: \u201cA bridge currency only works if someone is holding it so that you can get it precisely when you need it.\u201d He added that if users don\u2019t know which asset they will need next, they may rationally hold the \u201cdominant bridge\u201d because it\u2019s cheaper to pivot from a liquid hub asset into whatever comes next.<\/p>\n

Schwartz also addressed whether bridge assets still matter if stablecoins<\/a> increasingly cover most trading pairs. He allowed that \u201cif one stablecoin wins,\u201d it could act as the bridge, but said he doesn\u2019t think a single stablecoin can win because each is \u201conly\u2026stable relative to one particular fiat currency\u201d and anchored to jurisdictions. That multi-stablecoin reality, he argued, leaves room for a neutral bridge to connect a \u201clong tail\u201d of tokenized assets.<\/p>\n

Asked why a heavyweight like BlackRock wouldn\u2019t simply build its own chain for tokenization\u2014especially as some brokerages do\u2014Schwartz downplayed the importance of chain homogeneity in a world of interoperability and portability. He urged skeptics to \u201cask the same question about Circle\u2014why don\u2019t they launch USDC only on their own blockchain?\u201d implying the obvious answer: ubiquity and liquidity come from meeting users where they are, across many networks.<\/p>\n

On geopolitics, he drew a line between XRPL, which he described as neutral infrastructure, and Ripple\u2019s enterprise products, which are segmented by jurisdiction. \u201cIf you\u2019re asking about XRPL, it\u2019s not really US based,\u201d he wrote, adding that the ledger \u201chas never discriminated against any particular participant,\u201d and conceding that, for Ripple\u2019s own products, licensing realities apply and some corridors\u2014\u201cNorth Korea or Cuba any time soon\u201d\u2014are out of bounds.<\/p>\n

Schwartz further argued that XRP\u2019s role within Ripple\u2019s payments stack remains material even if much of it is not visible on public ledgers. \u201cI don\u2019t have the numbers in front of me,\u201d he wrote, \u201cbut I\u2019m pretty sure XRP\u2019s use as a bridge in Ripple Payments dwarfs every other asset.\u201d In a related point on XRPL design, he reminded readers that \u201cXRP has a privileged place on the XRP Ledger.\u201d<\/p>\n

At press time, XRP traded at $3.13.<\/p>\n

\"XRP<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ripple chief technology officer David \u201cJoelKatz\u201d Schwartz moved to explain the gap between Ripple\u2019s oft-touted roster of bank relationships and the still-modest on-chain activity on the XRP Ledger (XRPL), responding at length on July 30 to a widely shared thread of questions from investor and YouTuber Andrei Jikh. In a series of posts on X, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,4,5],"class_list":["post-39814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-crypto","tag-doge","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39814\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}