Ripple CTO On How The XRP Ledger Is Powering Asset Tokenization

Ripple CTO David Schwartz recently sat down to chat about how the XRP Ledger is enabling a revolution in the tokenization of real-world assets. While speaking in a recent interview, Schwartz noted his excitement around the XRP ecosystem graduating from the investors’ obsession with the XRP token to a more generalized interest in the functionalities of the XRP Ledger. 

According to the CTO, the institutional adoption of the XRP Ledger’s technology is also growing in its use in enterprise and financial applications. 

XRP Ledger Powering Asset Tokenization

The concept around the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) has gained ground in recent years. Digital asset tokenization of real-world assets allows owners to store rights of assets like gold and commodities on the blockchain. However, most of the attention around asset tokenization has gone towards Ethereum and a few other blockchains. 

According to Schwartz in the interview, this trend is now moving into the XRP Ledger, with mainstream financial giants like JP Morgan and Bank of America actively pursuing the tokenization of traditional assets. 

“There’s real interest from mainstream financial giants like JPMorgan and Bank of America are actively pursuing tokenization of traditional assets. So I think that’s a scenario to watch and I think that scenario with the XRP ledger is going to excel,” Schwartz said.

The CTO also emphasized the fundamental functionality of the XRP as a token with enough liquidity that can be bought and sold. This functionality is gaining traction in traditional finance, with financial institutions such as HSBC and Chase Bank allowing consumers to settle their mortgage loans using XRP.

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Schwartz pointed out that XRP’s early engineers built the XRP Ledger to address the enterprise adoption limitation of Bitcoin at the time, introducing XRP payment bridges with traditional finance.

Although the XRP Ledger was originally built for cross-border payments, he pointed out that the technology underpinning XRP isn’t nearly as intriguing as the other functionalities of the Layer-1 that powers the XRP Ledger.

“It’s exciting to see more focus on the technology. Things like the first DEX,” Schwartz said in relation to XRP being the first blockchain to feature a built-in decentralized exchange (DEX).

The Future Of Real-World Asset Tokenization

The future of asset tokenization holds a lot of promise in the coming years. Ripple has noted that it is setting its sights on the tokenized assets market, which could grow to become a $16 trillion business opportunity by 2030. 

IRipple’s CBDC advisor, Anthony Welfare, announced on social media in July that the company is concentrating on real-world use cases for stablecoin on Ripple’s platform, which would enable users to tokenize real estate as collateral for loans. 

In the Apex 2023 developer summit held last month, Schwartz noted that the XRP Ledger is the ultimate platform for tokenization of real-world assets due to its low transaction fees and its “integration with the DEX.”

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