Tom, the founder of OpenFind, has spotlighted a 2022 research paper co‑authored by incoming Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh that explicitly highlights XRP as a potential liquidity bridge for cross‑border payments.
In an X post, Tom pointed to the paper’s discussion of crypto assets — naming XRP by example — as a “bridge currency” that could help move value between stablecoins and national currencies. The authors also argue that private‑sector payment infrastructure should not be excluded from future digital money systems, a point Tom says underlines how companies like Ripple are becoming indispensable pieces of the global financial plumbing after decades of positioning.
What the paper proposed
- The paper explored a model in which a Special Drawing Rights (SDR)‑based stablecoin could be exchanged for any national currency. The authors noted that such an arrangement could resemble the cross‑border rails Ripple operates today, where XRP can be used as an on‑demand bridge to convert between currencies.
Ripple’s role and industry views
- XRP functions as the bridge asset in Ripple’s cross‑border payment service: customers can swap local currency for XRP and then convert XRP into the destination currency. Ripple CTO David Schwartz has previously argued that XRP offers advantages over stablecoins for these flows because there is no single, universal consensus stablecoin to settle transactions globally.
Regulatory context
- Kevin Warsh, who has expressed a generally pro‑crypto stance and disclosed crypto holdings prior to his nomination hearing, could soon have direct regulatory oversight affecting firms like Ripple. Ripple has applied for a Fed master account, and the Fed is reportedly considering a “skinny” master account model that would give crypto firms access to central bank payment rails — a development that could materially affect how tokenized and cross‑border transactions settle.
Institutional plumbing and tokenized securities
- Market commentators are also watching Ripple’s institutional push. X user “Finance Bull” highlighted that Ripple Prime has been confirmed as part of the DTCC’s blockchain ecosystem. The DTCC clears roughly $114 trillion in securities annually and is moving toward near‑continuous (24/5) U.S. equities processing. If DTCC’s tokenization efforts route settlement through infrastructures like Ripple Prime and the XRP Ledger, that could create sizable new rails and volumes — something the market may not yet have fully priced in.
Market reaction
- At the time of writing, XRP was trading around $1.35, up just over 3%, according to CoinMarketCap.
Bottom line: the Warsh‑coauthored paper puts XRP squarely in the conversation about future cross‑border liquidity and hybrid public/private payment infrastructures, while ongoing regulatory and institutional developments — from potential Fed master accounts to DTCC tokenization — could accelerate real‑world use cases for Ripple’s stack and XRP as a bridge asset.
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