In May 2023, Ripple (XRP) announced a new venture in the realm of digital finance: the launch of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) platform.
This dynamic platform empowers central banks, governments, and financial institutions to take charge of their digital currency issuance, distribution, and management.
Utilizing Ripple’s advanced technology and building upon their earlier Private Ledger project, this platform harnesses the power of the XRP Ledger (XRPL) to pave the way for a new era of customizable and efficient CBDCs.
Impressively, even though the new ledger was launched just three months ago, over 8 countries are already building CBDCs on XRP Ledger, blockchain news aggregator CryptoGeek revealed on August 19.
These include Russia, the Republic of Palau, Montenegro, Japan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Uruguay, New Zealand, and Hong Kong.
Over 15% of all countries may use XRPL as CBDC platform
Last month, James Wallis, the Vice President of Central Bank engagements and CBDCs at Ripple, said the blockchain company is in talks with more than 30 countries to adopt its XRPL-powered CBDC platform.
At the time, Wallis said Ripple publicly announced partnerships with 5 central banks, while 5 were not disclosed to the public yet. In addition, Ripple was in conversations with 20 more countries to offer them its private or public XRP ledger as a base for developing CBDCs.
Given that there are a total of 195 countries in the world, this suggests that more than 15% of global nations are considering using Ripple’s technology for building CBDCs.
XRP’s role
When Ripple announced a private XRP Ledger for CBDCs in 2021, the tech company said the cryptocurrency could “be leveraged as a neutral bridge asset for frictionless value movement between CBDCs and other currencies.”
However, although its private ledger is based on XRPL, it “does not require XRP to operate.” In other words, central banks who opt to build CBDCs on Ripple’s platform do not use or interact with the crypto token.
