Congratulations on your wins at Global Custodian’s Leaders in Custody awards. What—for you—were the contributing factors behind the successful year that led to this award?
It’s certainly been an exciting year for Ripple as well as the broader blockchain and digital assets industry. Our commitment to and expansion of our custody solution was the primary driver of our wins, aided by growing institutional adoption of digital assets as well as enhanced regulatory clarity around the world.
The reality is that we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of future industry growth. Our own research has shown that most global finance leaders plan to use digital asset custody solutions in their businesses within the next three years—intentions that will create enormous demand for sophisticated, secure and trusted institutional-grade custody solutions. That’s where Ripple comes in.
After seeing increased demand from banks for digital asset custody solutions, we made the strategic decision to acquire Metaco, a proven leader in institutional digital asset custody, to accelerate and double down on the market opportunity. The additional human, capital and technical resources from that acquisition helped shape what is now Ripple Custody, which makes it possible for our customers to safely and securely custody, issue and settle any type of tokenised asset.
This acquisition was a significant step in expanding Ripple’s suite of product offerings to support the critical technology infrastructure needs of enterprises, directly contributing to these award wins and our growing global footprint.
Could you outline some of the main achievements and milestones from the year?
The widening embrace of blockchain solutions has been an important contributor to our own growth. Global institutions and service providers have increasingly turned to Ripple as a leading provider of enterprise blockchain solutions and for our deep digital assets and TradFi expertise.
Shortly following the Metaco acquisition, Ripple closed a number of new client partnerships with leading financial institutions. BBVA Switzerland, for example, became the first tier one bank in the Eurozone to provide custody and trading services for cryptocurrencies to individual clients. HSBC also announced plans to launch a new digital asset custody service for institutional clients in partnership with Ripple Custody.
Other digital asset service providers have also leaned on our expertise to build out their own custody offerings. Zodia Custody integrated with Ripple Custody to create a global institutional network, providing greater access to its bank-grade custody solutions, while BCB Group moved its digital assets custody operations to consolidate its custody technology into a single platform.
Ripple’s entry into enterprise-grade digital asset custody is just one of many strategic moves made in recent months to expand blockchain use cases and adoption by institutional customers. From debuting the new Ripple Payments solution to announcing plans for a USD-backed stablecoin to entering region-specific partnerships in Japan, we remain hyper-focused on delivering blockchain-powered solutions for traditional finance’s biggest pain points.
How do you plan to build on this success going into the rest of the year and beyond?
Ripple is uniquely positioned to capitalise and help grow the global digital asset custody market. We serve hundreds of customers in over 55 countries and on six continents today, making us the go-to partner for digital asset infrastructure. Adding institutional-grade custody solutions to our portfolio is a natural extension of those offerings and serves an immediate customer need.
As part of that and in the wake of the Metaco deal, we recently completed another major acquisition with Standard Custody & Trust Company, an enterprise-grade regulated custodian for digital assets. Partnerships like this are an important part of our commitment to tapping the opportunity in the custody market while developing new services, such as stablecoins, for customers that help strengthen our position as a leader in enterprise blockchain solutions for finance.