Ripple expands liquidity hub to Brazil and Australia

0:00I'm Ashton Addison from blockwest capital for investment pitch media and today on the Crypto Coin Show we have Brad chase the head of liquidity products at Ripple Brad welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time absolutely thank you for having me you're very welcome very excited to dive into Ripple with you today in fact one of my first videos almost six six

0:23years ago now was about Ripple on my YouTube channel and it was the one that sort of exploded the channel so I'm very excited to have you guys on the show and I know so much has happened and you're working on a lot right now I would love to start off our conversation together by just hearing a little bit about your background in the space here and what

0:41exactly you're focused on at Ripple and then we'll dive into the latest details yeah absolutely again yeah thank drive me it's very cool to you know have someone who's has been aware of us and tracking us over the years so I guess for your listeners reminder to Ripple we're an Enterprise crypto company and if you distill it down we're really focused on making it

1:01simple and efficient to move value using crypto and blockchain we think they're just World transformative technologies that really you know enable Finance to be modernized and kind of the same way that the internet develops and made kind of all of Commerce amazing we started about 10 years ago really focused on payments we've since brought

1:21into other things like the equity management tokenization and cdbc specifically I focus on our liquidity products which includes a product called liquidity Hub that we recently launched that enables these businesses to kind of seamlessly integrate by selling Whole digital assets as part of operating a crypto first business very cool and it's nice yet Ripple

1:42continues to expand out into these different areas I want to dive into to the liquidity Hub a little bit later on I'd love to start with you know we got a high level there and just take it down one more step to talk about xrp and the xrpl or The Ledger and sort of the function of that if you could explain that a little bit to the viewers that would probably help with the context

2:03yeah absolutely so again you know your Ripple is an Enterprise for focused business and xrp is a decentralized digital asset that runs on a ledger called The xrp Ledger and xrp is really purpose built for payments in many ways it's you know very fast transactions settle in three to five seconds extremely low cost transaction costs you know hundredths of a sense

2:27and it's extremely scalable you know 1500 plus transaction per second carbon neutral and so kind of given this you know open decentralized blockchain you know Ripple Builds on top of that so we go and go find Enterprises and understand their business use cases and see where the xrp Ledger can kind of can solve for them and again payments particularly crossword Global Payments

2:50is what we've been working on really most earnestly as a company these past years and it benefits from having this kind of public infrastructure that's Global in nature decentralized that anyone can build on but then it really enable of these cross-border use cases and flows and particularly this payments use case definitely and there's some huge advantages of the technology

3:12from what I understand versus you know the old clunky ways and there I think there's still a lot to be done with actually penetrating that technology into the market can you talk a little bit about the current issues that the industry is facing on the liquidity side and how you and your team are working to solve those absolutely yeah that's again head

3:35liquidity that's what I spend my time thinking a lot about at Ripple so again yeah as you were noting just in your last comment it's a new technology there's a lot to get adoption one aspect of adoption is not just technology it's actually liquidity so that's the ability to transact kind of what immediacy kind of with great pricing kind of at the scale that you need to

3:55to offer your business so for a cross-border payment that's having that you know facility to go from a fiat currency to a digital asset currency or vice versa and so you know even though we have this massive 133 billion about 133 130 trillion dollar cross-border payments Market that has all these frictions intermediaries you can't just turn the switch over

4:19and crypto suddenly solved all the problems you have to build out these liquidity Partnerships these relationships these connections with a traditional Financial systems and what xrp does uniquely is it can settle so quickly and so because of that you might actually meet need less liquidity because there's less that has to be locked up during these longer settlement

4:37periods and so you know as we think about liquidity for our customers and our businesses as they're finding new ways to kind of send value faster reduce the amount of funds that they have to lock up we have to go help them source that liquidity in the crypto markets and the Fiat markets and then as we've done that for payments now we're seeing that for

4:56companies that are leaning into crypto liquidity directly and that's what prompted us to go work and develop liquidity Hub and so maybe if you really zoom out the way I tend to think of liquidity if it's almost a way to think about interoperability so if you have all these different tokens you know maybe today it's just kind of Fiat top cryptos top stable coins but if you think about

5:18this idea of tokenization or other aspects of our economy be it real estate or other different types of assets you need ways to transfer value between those and liquidity is that thing that's there that lets you do that kind of transfer value and really move value in an interoperable way across chains and real world assets thanks for that Brad and you mentioned

5:40the market of 130 trillion it's gigantic even compared to you know cryptocurrency market caps of like 1 trillion or less I feel like a lot of people don't fully understand okay how can we get all of that market into crypto but at the same time there's also you know there's there's cryptocurrencies and then there's the Ledger technology or distributed technology and the benefits

6:05of integrating that as well and I feel like p people that are making these cross-board payment companies that are making large transfers they don't always necessarily have to you know have some cryptocurrency that's included in the market cap of what we see as cryptocurrencies right now right there's also just the technology and being able to have less intermediaries or lower

6:27those fees and make it faster I feel like that would be a major part of it as well is that true yeah absolutely another way that Ripple thinks about it too is it's you know what you want the pie to be growing and there's parts of the you know different different types of like you know paired between assets where crypto is naturally Well Suited

6:50It's the types of customers are more interested in adopting it but there's other areas where crypto can be an enabler directly by being an asset but yeah and again there's even third areas where it's just the technology where it's not necessarily A cryptocurrency involved with some of the blockchain technology and so you know given that size if it's you know so big

7:08it was hard for me to even say 130 30 trillion properly all these things can be on the table to help solve the problems and it's going to be you know a mix of these you know pure technology all the way down to your crypto that are part of the solution and I guess where we come in and the way we think about it today is given it to the new technology it's even more

7:28true that it's a mix at the beginning because you're starting with things that are didn't exist before in terms of blockchain a decade ago it really kind of at the scale that we're at today and so part of an Enterprise like us is kind of smoothing out those challenges of needing to understand as a business and become an expert in how you mix these Technologies where we can take

7:47our experience and kind of consolidate that into a product like liquidity Hub or cross-border payments product that lets Enterprise get into the space and learn in a way where they don't have to be an expert of detecting one and with so many intermediaries and steps you know in the traditional cross-border payments infrastructure I feel like it's not just as easy as a

8:11flip of a switch for some of these major companies that are moving trillions of dollars to just be like okay let's just use crypto and Ledger you know tomorrow I feel like there's some onboarding steps to go through and so how is that process going so for the majority of the market yeah it's it's going well in the sense that you know 10 years ago when we started

8:33nobody knew you know like you know your listeners probably you know weren't around in this space a decade ago and we're now obviously we're cryptos at least in the mainstream in the sense that it's in the news people have a sense of what it is so that education is happening you know we're certainly seeing a lot of Enterprises and traditional institutional players

8:52leaning in starting to actually potentially have crypto in their balance sheets starting to use them in their flows that's again liquidity Hub but you know I think it's still a place where crypto is still largely you know built for the experts the people that really know how to manage a wallet or kind of how to manage things and so as much as you know Enterprises

9:13are are toying and learning they're still the tale of the early adopters those kind of you know people willing to blaze a path and kind of you know Tech forward firms that's they're the ones that are in and playing it's that next segment of people that are more established to your point that it's a little bit higher bar to adopt a new tech they're now curious in learning

9:33But you know again same way that none of these people around 10 years ago now we got a fraction that are we're going to keep continue to see that expand and that adoption and I can imagine they you could see clear incentives that you know there's distributed ledgers should have less intermediate increase they're going to be faster I'm sure that the

9:52transaction cost would be lower you know I know someone you know transferring even millions of dollars in traditional cross-border payments it's like percentages here and there and all of a sudden you know you're probably saving hundreds of thousands of dollars if you move to a cryptocurrency based Ledger it's just a matter of how do we get everybody else on board

10:12and do it in a way that it makes it more efficient so that everyone's on the same page yep that's I think one anecdote to me is like I remember so I've been a ripple for about seven years and I remember when our cross-border payments product called on-demand liquidity first launched and you know one name the customer one of the early customers we

10:32were doing first integration tests in the demos and by briefing through xrp like we sent a cross-border payment that settled in like under a minute and they like they didn't believe it you know it was like he made like they had to go check you know the banking accounts externally on things that's just mind-blowing for an Institutional player to just have that happen and which is

10:51fantastic to be part of that moment but you know that's the type of transformation it's just a new way of thinking kind of fundamentally for a lot of players in the space that's amazing and with the liquidity management you know how does your team prepare for if somebody comes in and says okay we want to transfer a trillion dollars you know how do you prepare the

11:13liquidity and or do you have mechanisms like AI or machine learning to determine you know where to have the assets and how to be ready to help these large players yeah definitely so you know if somebody's not yet calling us up for that trillion dollars hopefully one day we're there but it's very much that so it's the way we use and machine learning is to really understand

11:35customer demand what are their businesses trying to do and look at those time series and signals and then be able to forecast that and then be able to then as you just said you know have these planning systems that go make sure there's sufficient liquidity in the places they need to be to fulfill that demand when it happens and you know even before that

11:54trillion dollars you're talking about hundreds of customers billions of dollars you know you can't manage that manually and traditional Finance doesn't manage that manually and so you know we need to build systems machine learning and automation to do that on behalf of our customers and maybe you know the one aspect of crypto that comes in is again the speed

12:15Factor but also there's a richness of data and that you know crypto is largely you know public data in terms of the raw blockchain and so there's new techniques and new methodologies that we're are developing to make those predictions better make the speed with which we can respond to changes in those predictions better but that's definitely a key part

12:33of how this industry can scale and certainly how our products will scale and can you explain a little bit more on the liquidity Hub and exactly what that program is yeah so again it kind of came out of our experience first focusing on this cross-border payments case like we actually it was kind of in some ways it was and his maybe still is but was the

12:55first real Enterprise application of crypto and so to do that we had to go figure out how to build a crypto first business we had to you know integrate with traditional non-traditional systems figure out how to manage that liquidity make it available build out you know trading and execution systems to be able to power that cross-border payment and so kind of as that went

13:15on and as you know started talked about customers about adjacent use cases and needs we started to realize hey the same technology that we had to develop ourselves to build a crypto first business there are other companies now that want to go build a crypto first business they shouldn't have to reinvent that wheel themselves it's largely undifferentiated very hard and important

13:33work but it's not really maybe as you know a crypto PSP that they really need to go solve or an nft Marketplace like you'd rather have somebody else that can kind of solve that ability to access liquidity and manage crypto liquidity and manage your amino acids and you go focus on that nft experience that you're trying to build for your customers and so you know what we did

13:54kind of over the kind of past year and change we stepped back to figure out how do we pull out that technology repackage it so it's really just that simple experience for a customer that can integrate with an API they can get quotes to be able to buy or sell the crypto and then kind of withdraw and manage it for their business flows so it's been an exciting Journey that I've

14:12been part of at Ripple and just fantastic that you know we're we're seeing the need in the market in a way that we had to live a couple years before so that we can bring that experience and expertise for our Enterprise customers very cool Brad and being a cross-border payment solution I would hopefully we'll be able to transcend all borders eventually but I'm

14:32guessing that you and your team sort of focused on some first geographic regions that were ripe for adoption or for Innovation where sort of the main focus is right now with the recent launch of the liquidity hub yeah absolutely so definitely that internet of value vision is where we're heading where value moving around the world instantaneously where we've gone with liquidium so we

14:54started in the U.S where we initially got you know the licensing shop the product and we most recently excited to share the news I think we just announced publicly this month that we're bringing it to Brazil and Australia why those regions that's where we've got a lot of Partners and existing business for our cross-border payments products so new not about knew enough

15:14about those those countries and companies we also find those regions are very crypto forward a lot of consumers in those regions are using it so then Enterprises are looking kind of service them as well but the same time you know maybe their kind of localized crypto exchanges providers industry are not as sophisticated as other parts of the world so if you're a business in

15:36Australia Today you've got a bit of a patchwork to put together how you manage your crypto assets across multiple different providers again coming back to motivation of equity hub that's work that you don't really want to do if your goal is to go build an nft Marketplace or to go build you know some other application that requires crypto and so that's why we're you know we brought to

15:55Market in those places seeing some great opportunities and traction there and looking to continue to go around the globe ahead of us very cool and you know speaking of those sort of smaller companies and commerce products I would hope eventually everyone should be able to take advantage of you know this kind of technology and hopefully all e-commerce

16:19stores and companies should be able to do exactly you know have the same benefits that these major cross-border people are utilizing with the ledgers and almost no cost and instant finality do you think that's something that will be achievable in the future yeah absolutely I think you know again it comes from consumers needing that and wanting that and seeing kind of

16:41efficiencies for their own lives but then it's also I guess it's kind of this two-tier thing in my mind which is maybe the cool thing about crypto so like consumers you know parties and crypto they want it they're going to want to use it and so brands that serve them companies that serve them will actually will want to be there right they want to be able to meet

16:58the customers where they need in fact this generation of digitally first consumers grew up using the internet grew up using all these the payment Technologies it's natural that they'll adopt digital currencies it's part of their digital experience that their life is entirely has digital aspects living in but the second tier that's interesting is the one that you hit on a

17:17little bit ago too where even if you don't really think about crypto as the main you know part of how you run into say an e-commerce business but infrastructure costs below the surface are cheaper using these kind of for like better like shared public crypto infrastructure that these ledgers give you and so if you just want to be more competitive efficiency efficient and

17:37reduce you know cost and scale you're going to need to invest at some level of this technology in your stack over time so you know I kind of view it in the same way that you know you don't really ask if company's an internet company anymore like yeah everybody any business involves being on the internet to some degree I think the same transition will

17:56happen I don't know how quickly but over time with crypto where it's not going to be are you a crypto Club anymore no part of my business strategy part of how I offer my business will have some aspect of digital asset technology blockchain or crypto it's a great analogy Brad and what do you think could be some of the catalysts to get to that next stage of

18:16adoption you know obviously the liquidity Hub is helping with Enterprises and then hopefully that trickles down to smaller companies because I feel like a lot of these companies they're probably you know they're not focused on the volatility of crypto they're probably going to want to use stable coins for the most part for transferring or doing business

18:34and so therefore you know the price of crypto assets might not necessarily encourage them to increase business in that area you know say the Bitcoin price Rises more people aren't going to necessarily adopt e-commerce with Ledger technology because of that there must be some other catalysts in the market maybe just the length of time that the technology has been around and the trust

18:57of it that eventually more businesses will jump on or maybe some spike from some kind of Regulation or innovation yeah definitely that makes of items I'd say you know continue regulatory Clarity it's a lot easier for Builders to build when they know the rules of the road and they can do it well I think the other aspect that I think about volatility especially is like use cases really are

19:21what drives success and so again in the same way that you don't think yourself as an internet company but you should it's what did that technology do for you what problem were you solving for your customers or your end users you know blockchain and crypto has to do the same thing so we think payments and cross-border payments is a case where this is a use case we're

19:39solving this is a thing that is people want to do but it's really hard to do with the whatever you know the technology today the infrastructure that we have today so this is a manifestly better experience and I think as you know the industry continues to Define these use cases maybe it's something around identity that's a lot easier to manage now in a way that wasn't

19:58before as you have more and more of these then there will be the mix of the stable coins the pure cryptos the real world assets that are tokenized but they'll be driven by use cases and as you get more use cases then I believe you know find out that a lot of that volatility will start to go away because there'll be this more regularity they'll be a better understanding of

20:17what these assets are used for and I'll just kind of kind of make it more of a consistent experience but again yeah always start from that customer that problem that we're solving and I think all those things work out over time great Point Brett and with the liquidity Hub as you continue to grow it out what are the next steps for adoption is it sticking to those areas and

20:40onboarding new Enterprises or new geographic regions or something else yeah mix of those things so definitely looking to continue to bring it to New Markets kind of new customer segments you know we're definitely focused on this tip of the sphere of those crypto fintech very kind of forward-looking firms that are really leaning into crypto we're going to continue great

21:01give them great features to help you know seamlessly onboard operate more quickly things like sandboxes or other improved Integrations with their back office systems and whatnot but I think you know over time the expansion of the cloud you have will be kind of segment by segment so we start the segments today that we understand their needs quite well maybe these nft marketplaces

21:22crypto ATM or crypto Merchant but then other businesses start to adopt crypto so maybe you know there's businesses that start to have crypto on their treasury how do we help them manage that how do we do that in a simple seamless manner for them and so expand kind of more and more features for who we know today more and more geographies for who we know today and then get to know more

21:44our customers and solve their their challenges and adopting crypto very exciting and where's the best place to learn more about this recent announcement of the liquidity Hub into Brazil and Australia and to follow along for the future updates on the roadmap that you're talking about yeah absolutely check out ripple.com we have a ripple insights type of a Blog

22:05where we do lots of announcements active on Twitter or X or what you're wanting to call it these days but definitely ripple.com is a great starting place to learn more about our products and our services sounds great Brad thank you so much for the insights all the best with everything at Ripple and the liquidity Hub moving forward and let's follow up

22:24in the near future awesome great to meet you and thank you for the time today thank you