DISCLAIMER: GoldInvestors.news is not a registered investment, legal or tax advisor or broker/dealer. All investment/financial opinions expressed by GoldInvestors.news are from the personal research and experience of the owner of the site and are intended as educational material. Although best efforts are made to ensure that all information is accurate and up to date, occasionally unintended errors and misprints may occur.

Ripple may be targeting the territory long dominated by SWIFT, but the scale of XRP’s role in that effort remains unproven. Dan Morehead, founder and CEO of Pantera Capital, told CNBC News that Ripple is pursuing the cross border payments market associated with the global financial messaging network.

Morehead’s remarks revived a comparison that has followed XRP for years without being demonstrated at institutional scale. His comments reveal how a prominent cryptocurrency investor views Ripple’s competitive position, but they do not establish how much of the company’s settlement volume actually moves through XRP.

The Pantera Capital executive raised the subject during a Squawk Box segment that also covered Solana’s transaction throughput and Bitcoin’s role as digital gold. He presented Ripple’s SWIFT ambition as one of several important blockchain use cases, rather than describing an imminent displacement of the network used by banks.

SWIFT, formally known as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is the dominant messaging system connecting financial institutions across borders. It coordinates payment instructions among banks, while Ripple has spent years developing infrastructure intended to deliver faster and cheaper settlement than the correspondent banking chain.

Ripple’s own cross border payments page shows why the company’s progress cannot automatically be treated as evidence of XRP adoption. The platform supports RLUSD, USDC, USDT, or fiat, and allows customers to use “whichever asset your business requires,” according to Ripple.

The company also says its settlement layer is decoupled from any single issuer’s token. That design makes XRP one available asset among several, rather than an unavoidable component of every payment processed through Ripple’s infrastructure.

Ripple reports that its platform provides payout access across more than 60 markets and has processed more than $100 billion in cumulative volume. Those figures come from the company, and they do not disclose how much of that volume settled through XRP instead of stablecoins or fiat payment rails.

That missing breakdown sits at the center of the SWIFT comparison. Large enterprise payment figures can demonstrate use of Ripple’s broader network, but without token specific disclosure, they cannot establish corresponding demand for XRP.

The distinction has followed Ripple since the SEC sued the company in December 2020, alleging that XRP constituted an unregistered security. Ripple won a partial victory in 2023 when a federal judge ruled that XRP was not a security when sold to retail investors on public exchanges.

The broader regulatory situation involving institutional sales remained unresolved, according to the source account. Throughout the legal battle, Ripple continued expanding its payments network and adding partners, developments that investors have repeatedly interpreted as positive signals for XRP’s price.

Yet Ripple’s corporate expansion and XRP’s market performance can move independently. Treating every new partnership, payment product, or integration as a direct token catalyst risks blurring the difference between growth in Ripple’s business and measurable use of XRP.

That pattern also appeared in reports about Ripple’s AI payments integration with Stripe. The development produced similar optimism, but it did not resolve how much of the resulting payment activity would specifically touch XRP.

Ripple’s materials describe a hybrid system in which digital assets can operate as bridge currencies alongside stablecoins and conversions into fiat. The model may reduce requirements for advance funding, but its flexibility also means XRP does not necessarily carry most of the payment flow.

The same question extends beyond Ripple because growth in a payment network does not automatically translate into demand for a related token. In Ripple’s case, the company’s architecture expressly permits businesses to select among several assets according to their needs.

Morehead’s acknowledgment provides institutional validation for Ripple’s strategy and its ambition to compete in cross border payments. It does not replace disclosure showing what fraction of Ripple’s processed volume actually settles through XRP.

Until Ripple publishes that token specific figure, claims about XRP challenging SWIFT remain difficult to measure. The company may have a substantial network, broad market access, and significant cumulative volume, but those achievements alone do not prove corresponding payment demand for XRP.

DISCLAIMER: GoldInvestors.news is not a registered investment, legal or tax advisor or broker/dealer. All investment/financial opinions expressed by GoldInvestors.news are from the personal research and experience of the owner of the site and are intended as educational material. Although best efforts are made to ensure that all information is accurate and up to date, occasionally unintended errors and misprints may occur.