The world is fast moving towards a crypto-first future. One in which every company will have a strategy for how to leverage crypto, tokenized assets, smart contracts and more to transfer value and fuel a rising tide of global digital transactions and commerce. Liquidity – the ability to instantly, seamlessly and affordably exchange assets – is the key to turning this vision for a bold new future into reality.
While there are many exchanges supporting liquidity through the consumer trading of digital assets, a true crypto-first world will remain elusive without enterprise participation.
Just as ubiquity for electric vehicles is impossible absent large automakers like Ford and Volvo, mainstream crypto requires engagement from financial institutions.
To enable this, today we revealed plans for Ripple Liquidity Hub, a groundbreaking new way for enterprises to easily and efficiently source digital assets from the broader crypto market. As a crypto liquidity platform built for the enterprise, it will unleash the potential to access deep liquidity within markets, accelerating the shift to crypto.
Designed as a turnkey solution for financial institutions, Ripple Liquidity Hub will leverage smart order routing to source digital assets at optimized prices from market makers, exchanges, and OTC desks. Enterprises will use Ripple Liquidity Hub to easily and seamlessly provide their end customers with the ability to buy, sell and hold digital assets at the best possible prices across a range of venues.
Ripple Liquidity Hub will uniquely solve for the specific pain points of enterprise customers, avoiding long and resource-heavy integrations through a streamlined API, and – unlike most other offerings – eliminating pre-funding requirements in order to free up working capital.
And while the XRP Ledger and XRP are and will remain a native part of our tech stack, we at Ripple believe that achieving interoperability is key to unlocking crypto’s true potential. The ability to interoperate crypto across networks will break down barriers to entry and enable greater competition and inclusion. Because of this, Ripple Liquidity Hub will initially support BTC, ETH, LTC, ETC, BCH and XRP (availability will vary by geography) with plans to add additional digital assets over time. In the future, Ripple plans to add functionality such as staking and yield generating functionalities.
RippleNet GM Asheesh Birla explained that we have been successfully using this same crypto sourcing technology to support Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) product for nearly two years. Now, in response to customer demand, Ripple is making this proven resource available as a customer-facing product for 2022 and beyond.
“We know full-well the need for easy and efficient liquidity management. Crypto and financial institutions are embedded in our DNA. So, it makes perfect sense that as they prepare for a crypto-first world, our customers would want access to the same trusted one-stop shop for buying, selling and holding crypto assets that has powered our own extensive work with financial institutions,” said Birla.
The first announced partner for the alpha version of the product is Coinme, the first licensed bitcoin ATM company in the United States, with thousands of locations across the country. Initially, Coinme will utilize the underlying technology platform of Liquidity Hub, with plans to unlock additional functionality as it becomes available.
