Ripple has identified Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) as a top priority in its 2023 projections and goals, and has had important collaborations with several countries. As Bitcoinist reported, in mid-January a fintech company landed in the southeastern European country of Montenegro to pilot a digital stablecoin.
Already in the second half of last year, Ripple was able to announce the island nation of Palau and the Kingdom of Bhutan as CBDC customers. In addition, the company is working on a number of initiatives around the world, including the digital pound, where Ripple participates in the Digital Pound Foundation, which has repeatedly been in the news recently.
In a January panel largely overlooked in the XRP community, Brook Entwistle, senior vice president and managing director at Ripple, revealed new details on CBDCs. At the Crypto Finance Conference in mid-January, Entwistle revealed that his company is very active in Singapore:
We have a very large CBDC practice, now globally based. We have actually put four people on the ground in Singapore alone, focusing on this.
In the XRP community, this is interpreted as a strong sign that Ripple has made contact with the Singapore government or even the country’s central bank to push CBDC. Whether Ripple has become a partner, however, is pure speculation and remains to be seen.
In November last year, it was announced that Singapore’s central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) was exploring the Ubin+ wholesale CBDC project for cross-border payments. This project will test the use of CBDC for foreign exchange and liquidity management, as well as connectivity between CBDC and other digital asset networks.
As part of Ubin+, MAS is also participating in the SWIFT CBDC sandbox with 17 other central banks and commercial banks to test cross-border interoperability. It should be emphasized that Ripple has not been mentioned in any of these announcements.
Ripple Exec Emphasizes Focus On CBDCs
In addition to his statement about Singapore, Brook Entwistle shared another interesting comment about Ripple’s CBDC strategy. “It’s an important effort, it’s an important product,” the executive said, and explained again, “We’ve determined that in addition to the payment business, CBDC is an important part of what we’re going to do.”
However, Entwistle also warned that as part of the industry, Ripple should be careful “chasing every shiny new thing” because it could dilute its business model.
That’s how Ripple focuses on smaller governments, small central banks that need holistic solutions and sidechains, created from scratch, he said. In that vein, Entwistle spoke about the Kingdom of Bhutan:
Our first MoU is the Kingdom of Bhutan – a very advanced, technologically advanced kingdom. And they want a better way to move any type of value across the country – whether it’s payments or other things. But also a system to prepare so that they can finally have remittance back in the country as well.
In addition, the execution stated that Ripple is in dialogue and cooperation with several central banks around the world. “At the Chinese level and the US level, a lot of people are chasing it. A lot of people have their own sovereign interests, so you have to be realistic about your influence there,” Entwistle said.
He concluded by saying that Ripple’s technology could play an important role in the interoperability of CBDCs around the world:
But CBDC will be an important topic for all industries moving forward and the interoperability between them – we think it has a real opportunity for many of us at the table.
At press time, the price of XRP stood at $0.3881, trading below the 200-day EMA.
Featured image from Singapore Business Review, Chart from TradingView.com