On 30 July, Ripple Chief Technical Officer David Schwartz published an article on social media platform X on the strategic role of XRP in global asset settlement. In response to a question from the investor Andrei Jikh, Schwartz explained why XRP was uniquely able to support the changing needs of cross-border financial infrastructure, especially in the context of monetization and interoperability as a capital market priority.
In response to a widely discussed question: “Why not use a stable currency for transfers if the XRP is highly volatile?” Schwartz replied: “The existence of some volatility is not a disadvantage, and may even be an application of an advantage. As a rule, for most digital assets, the prevailing view is that the upward potential is greater than the downside risk, so that as long as you are less averse to risk, holding it is not a real disadvantage.”
He further explained that the function of XRP as a bridge currency depended on the availability at the moment of the transaction — which gave it the flexibility it might lack in its statutory peg to stabilize the currency, especially in more dispersed or rapidly changing markets. Schwartz noted that XRP was designed as a neutral, non-border asset to support real-time liquidity across multiple monetization instruments and currencies.
Schwartz also referred to XRP Ledger (XRPL) and its downgrading exchange, although Ripple had not yet used XRPL DEX for enterprise-level payments due to compliance protection measures. “Even Ripple cannot use XRPL DEX for payment because we cannot ensure that terrorists will not provide the liquidity required for payment.” He mentioned, however, the licensing domain functions under development, which were intended to introduce transaction-level controls that met institutional requirements. Schwartz describes XRPL, which is tailored for interoperability and global asset flows, with infrastructure that can support large and secure settlements in a growing digital economy.