The news on SWIFT’s integration with R3 triggered speculations over possible integration between SWIFT and Ripple, pushing up XRP price.
On Wednesday, January 30, global banking payments system SWIFT made an important announcement of its integration R3’s blockchain-based trade finance platform. SWIFT and R3 together will develop a proof-of-concept to link R3 Corda Platform to link with SWIFT’s GPI payments framework. Thus, it would help them to monitor the payments flow, settle GPI payments through interbank connectivity, and receive credit confirmations.
Yesterday’s big announcement has caused XRP price to jump 10% swiftly. XRP is currently trading at $0.325 with a market cap of $13.3 billion. The 24-hour trading volume for XRP is over $900 million, at the press time.
Paris FinTech Forum Discussion
SWIFT CEO Gottfried Leibbrandt announced SWIFT’s R3 Corda integration while speaking at the Paris FinTech Forum. Leibbrandt was sharing the stage with Ripple CO Brad Garlinghouse. Both the leaders, however, fired some shots at each other during the discussion.
Besides outlines some weak points of the SWIFT system, Garlinghouse didn’t miss the chance to highlight the benefits of decentralization. He said:
“Swift today is a one-way messaging framework, it isn’t a liquidity provider. When we think about an internet of value, it’s a mixture of two-way messaging frameworks — moving to a real-time chatting protocol if you will — coupled with real-time liquidity.”
Nonetheless, Garlinghouse said that they are open to work with SWIFT in the future.
On the other hand, Leibbrandt said that SWIFT’s reluctance to blockchain was due to the extreme volatility of the crypto market. He also hinted that the drawback of Ripple Labs is its major reliance on XRP.
“I think that the big part of Ripple’s value proposition is the cryptocurrency XRP,” Leibbrandt said. “There we do find the banks are hesitant to convert things into a cryptocurrency right now because of the volatility in the currencies.”
However, despite a mildly heated exchange between the two leaders, the XRP + SWIFT rumor mill is catching heat. This is probably the major reason behind XRP’s price surge. XRP bulls are now speculating that R3’s alliance with Ripple will pull SWIFT to adopt XRP tokens in future.
But looking to the comments coming from SWIFT CEO, such a possibility looks bleak at the moment. Also, it is quite possible that SWIFT might consider Ripple’s XRP-independent blockchain solutions like the xCurrent.
Ripple Hires New Head for Legal Matters
Although Ripple is one of the most progressive blockchain companies, it is still laden with controversies. A number of investors have accused Ripple of selling its XRP tokens as unregistered securities. To take care of all its legal matters, Ripple has hired CIT Group’s Stuart Alderoty to head its legal division.
Alderoty will look after Ripple’s global legal policy and Bank Secrecy Act compliance teams, said Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse in the official announcement.
With multiple class-action lawsuits filed by individual investors on Ripple, Alderoty has a huge task at hand to clean up the mess.
* To learn more about XRP coin, Ripple Labs company and their innovative solutions, please check out our awesome “What is ripple?” guide.
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