EXCLUSIVE: Ripple's Brendan Berry On 2024 Trends, Why Crypto's 'Second Wave' Is All About Utility

Earlier this year, Ripple expressed optimism that following a pivotal court decision not classifying XRP XRP/USD as a security, U.S. banks and financial institutions would begin to embrace XRP for international payments.

And they were right, Ripple's Head of Payments Brendan Berry told Benzinga at its recent Future Of Digital Assets event.

HSBC Holdings plc HSBC, for example, announced last week that it would soon offer a custody service for its digital assets like tokenized securities to its institutional clients. The bank tapped Metaco, a Ripple Labs-owned technology firm, to handle safekeeping services.

"HSBC announced a partnership with Metaco, which is a company that we acquired, that is using digital asset custody to bring tokenized securities to their customer base," Berry said. "But more broadly, there's countless examples of people solving real customer problems by applying this technology."

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Earlier this year, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) unveiled a new initiative called the Payments Interoperability and Extension (PIE) task force, which would feature the participation of Ripple. XRP's moniker, "The Banker's Coin," was apparently well-earned.

"We just announced three new things that we're super excited about," Berry continued. "The first of which is a new capability for our product, cross border payment solution that allows enterprises and corporates more broadly to get it to take advantage of blockchain-enabled payment solutions without having to have any crypto expertise."

What It Means: Corporate clients could start sending payments across the globe to more than 70 different locations and no crypto expertise is required, Berry explained.

The trend underscored how a growing number of companies are keen on using blockchain and tokenization for real-world applications. And with such an emphasis on global and cross-border payments, the feedback Ripple had been receiving from corporates is "pretty powerful," Berry added.

"Companies don't demand a technology; they demand someone to solve their problems," he said. "And one of the things that I'm so passionate about is the fact that blockchain is a killer application for payments. Specifically, there are lingering problems within payments, specifically, very high costs, very slow speeds, very high error rates and blockchain is the perfect intersection or application to solve these problems."

Ripple, a company created by the founders of the XRP Ledger, is wrapping up a dramatic year: Jim Cramer predicted XRP would crash to zero; Ethereum ETH/USD co-founder Vitalik Buterin criticized Ripple’s XRP for being "completely centralized;" Ripple nixed plans to acquire Fortress; and of course, there was the ongoing lawsuit with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

As for what's next, Berry anticipated what he called "a second wave" for cryptocurrency.

“The first wave... crypto was predominantly focused around speculative investing,” he said. “I'm really passionate about what I refer to as the second wave, which is utility."

Berry expects to see a higher volume of investment and more builders and developers in the space that are turning toward blockchain and crypto-based solutions as a way to solve problems in ways previously not possible.

“And so when I think about 2024," he adds, "I think we're going to see a major catalyst on that front."

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