Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse says the company has more demand for its XRP cross-border payments product than it can currently facilitate.
Known as On-Demand Liquidity (ODL), the payments product relies on crypto exchanges to accept cash and move the equivalent value in XRP across borders, where it can be converted right back to fiat currency. As long as there is enough liquidity in the XRP marketplace, the transactions can process in seconds and largely bypass the issue of crypto price volatility.
In order to ensure that liquidity stays sufficient, Garlinghouse tells Modern Consensus they’ve actually had to slow the adoption of the product.
“[The company has] actually throttled that growth because one of the things that’s important when using ODL is you have to have really good liquidity on both sides of the transaction. And so, if XRP doesn’t have enough liquidity in the marketplace, [then] you can’t put as much demand through.”
The company recently hired former Goldman Sachs FX executive director Aditya Turakhia to help create a strategy to boost XRP liquidity and enlist more market makers, brokers, and exchanges.
Garlinghouse also says demand for ODL is outpacing the company’s overarching international payments platform, RippleNet, which doesn’t require XRP.
Ripple says more than 20% of all transactions on its global network of financial institutions now use their native currency. It was at less than 10% as recently as the fourth quarter of 2019.
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