Ripple Chairman Chris Larsen suggested years back that XRP could work alongside SWIFT, but how would this development impact the price of the token?
For context, in July 2015, Chris Larsen, Ripple co-founder and then-CEO, shared the company’s long-term vision for global payments during an interview with Global Finance Magazine. Larsen clarified that Ripple does not plan to replace existing financial infrastructure, such as SWIFT or ACH, but to work with them.
During the interview, Larsen, who is now Ripple’s Chairman, compared Ripple with early blockchain systems like Bitcoin. He explained that Bitcoin introduced the idea of a single global digital currency meant to serve as an alternative to existing financial systems.
Larsen acknowledged Bitcoin’s breakthrough, which allows money transfers between networks without a central operator. However, he argued that Bitcoin faced two major limitations.
According to Larsen, Bitcoin either required global adoption as a single currency or forced users to constantly convert between Bitcoin and fiat currencies, which exposed them to the same currency risks present in today’s system. Due to these constraints, he said Bitcoin worked better for consumers and merchants than for large financial institutions.
Larsen then explained how Ripple was different. He described Ripple as a payments rail that connects financial networks and enables real-time settlement in any currency. He stressed that Ripple does not plan to replace messaging systems or payment networks. Instead, Ripple could operate alongside SWIFT’s global messaging services.
Over 15 years later, the XRP community has revived Larsen’s comments, especially his reference to Ripple working alongside SWIFT.
Chart Nerd, a market analyst and XRP community member, called attention to the remarks, speculating on the potential market reaction if SWIFT corridors migrated to Ripple’s XRPL-based payment network, RippleNet.
In a later disclosure, Chart Nerd pointed out that, in 2024, SWIFT boasted of roughly 40,000 corridors. According to him, these corridors processed about $150 trillion in cross-border value each year.
Considering these figures, an XRP integration with SWIFT as a bridge asset for global settlement could have a massive impact on the XRP price. However, it remains unclear how much the XRP price could rise. As a result, we consulted Google Gemini.
In response, Google Gemini stated that if XRP integrated directly into SWIFT or worked seamlessly with it to provide liquidity, XRP would move from a speculative asset to a major part of global financial infrastructure.
Based on this assumption, Gemini projected a hypothetical XRP price range of $80 to $120. The chatbot explained that this estimate relied on XRP capturing a large share of the liquidity needed to facilitate the $150 trillion in annual cross-border transactions.
Despite these projections, discussions around XRP working with SWIFT have cooled due to recent developments. Specifically, SWIFT appears to have moved forward with its own blockchain initiatives that do not include XRP.
In October 2024, SWIFT announced that global banks would begin live trials of digital asset and currency transactions over the SWIFT network starting in 2025, with a focus on interoperability.
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