Ripple Grapples With Its $21 Billion 'Gorilla': Crypto Asset Adoption

The question of crypto asset adoption was certainly on many of the attendees' minds, especially since Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse announced the previous day that xRapid, the company's product the leverages the XRP cryptocurrency for "On-demand liquidity" in cross-border payments, is now being used in commercial payments by three companies.

At the time of the event, the combined value of all XRP in circulation was worth roughly $21 billion, with each asset trading for around $0.50.

Widely circulated estimates suggest Ripple owns as much as 60 percent of the overall market for the asset, though many remain under trading restrictions.

They were joined by Kwon Park, head of business development at Bittrex, a cryptocurrency exchange that has partnered with Ripple to facilitate the fiat-to-XRP transactions at the center of xRapid; and Alfredo O'Hagan, SVP of payment services at IDT, a telecoms firm that provides international payment services and has trialed xRapid in the past.

As might be expected from a group that uses cryptocurrencies in their businesses, the panelists were mostly enthusiastic about the adoption of digital, cryptographic assets in cross-border payments.

Garlinghouse perhaps captured the unsatisfactory nature of the incumbent payment infrastructure on the first day of the conference, when he said that the fastest way to move money from Kuwait to San Francisco was to put cash in a suitcase and fly it there.

"The corporate risk committee had to be convinced," said O'Hagan, continuing, "The first time we mentioned, cryptocurrency we got this".

Regulatory uncertainty and internal pushback are not the only barriers to mass cryptocurrency adoption in international payments, however.

In other words, part of what's holding back adoption is lack of adoption.

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