GrayFox

It is difficult to answer some of these questions. If Ripple is bound by Non disclosures then we will never know the true extent of its adoption. Ripple is privately run and not publicly traded so they do not need to reveal anything to us and certainly NDAs don't help this matter at all. SWIFT is for the banks, by the banks and of the banks. Central Bank money used to be exclusive to just banks. This is changing to create an even playing field. Take the Bank of England for example opening its doors to non-banks which is an incredible moment where you no longer need to go through HSBC, Barclays and their ilks to get to BoE. The price chart for XRP should not be an indicator to Ripple's success and adoption. After all, blockchain and DLT pose some fundamental questions, are they technologically advance enough to force us to rethink our entire monetary system and financial markets or do these systems simply provide enough advancement that they only need to plug and play with the current system. Do they complement or do we need to rebuild? I'm in XRP because I believe Interledger Protocol will affect the XRP price in the future and that future could be 10 to 20 years down the line and I'm happy to stay. If DLT is asking us to rebuild or rethink our financial system for the internet age, then it's not something that will take under 5 years. I believe there are other factors that may affect the future growth of the crypto market. Take for example, Africa's advancement in Mobile money and their free trade agreement. They demand interoperability for this to succeed. This may take years to build and incorporate the whole continent into a single market.

Bad accounting and cooking books might be the downfall of many of those "too big to fail" players. I hope Harry Markopolos is wrong about General Electric cooking their books and that they are fine but if he is right, then we are about to see a downfall that would eclipse Enron. 280,000 employees are about to go down with it and pensions included. Personally for Ripple, they wouldn't be affected. In fact, I believe a recession would be the perfect time for Ripple to flourish. Banks could potentially save billions getting rid of most of their I.T. budget and jumping to Cloud and DLT based solutions. The lower error rates in settlements also improved KYC/AML checks will save them money by automating the processes instead of having entire departments dedicated to those tasks. PS: For the General Electric fiasco, I'm referring to this:

If anything this just makes me more bullish. https://www.ecb.europa.eu//pub/economic-bulletin/articles/2019/html/ecb.ebart201905_03~c83aeaa44c.en.html#toc5

I don't think banks will be replaced but they will definitely need to evolve. Since 2008, the UK for example has been pushing for some reforms where as consumer banking and savings is being ring fenced from the investment arm. Banks love to take risk with other people's money knowing full well if they go down then the tax payers will foot the bill even though they gambled with tax payer's money in the first place. This happened to Lloyds TSB (they then got split up), RBS and Bradford & Bingley. Funny enough, each country had a sacrificial lamb in the alter of progress. The US had Lehman Bros. and the UK had Northern Rock. This time around, Germany will have its Deutsche Bank which will probably bring even stricter reforms to try and separate consumer and savings accounts with the corporate and investment side. Bank of England's push towards opening its doors to financial institutions other than banks is one step closer towards achieving this goal. They are creating an even playing field by breaking the monopolisation of Central Bank money by other banks. This is why this new FedNow scheme met a bit of resistance from incumbents in the US, they did not want this system to come directly from the Fed, they wanted to make their own. I'm not sure if they anticipated the Fed to follow the same route as the Bank of England, afterall they have been in consultation with each other for the renewed RTGS system in the UK. It's all conjecture for me but I cannot deny that underneath the table, there are some serious reforms happening and a new monetary system is taking shape right before our eyes. DLT, Blockchain and Digital assets have opened up a can of worms.

The timelines are perfectly in sync with the bank of england's RTGS system revamp but let's face it folks, the only company I feel bad for is FedEx...

ISO 20022 and MT101 are just standardised formats. It likes when composing an e-mail most if not all platforms will have certain boxes such as To, CC, Subject, Main body of text. It has nothing to do with how SWIFT works underneath and it certainly doesn't affect how Ripple works. Also Ripple is compliant with those standards. The link to the two documents below: Sagar Sarbhai presentation to the IMF: https://www.imf.org/~/media/Files/Conferences/2018/cbs-imf-adb-joint-seminar/samoa-session2-sagar-sarbhai.ashx?la=en Acarate: https://www.atc.asia/articles/170105/aca161124ripple.pdf

It only took them like 18 years to give the September 11 first responders a peaceful life. I don't think we have any chance

Oh he hates XRP. He tried to go head to head with Brad and got shut down. He's the one on the far right

Joseph Lubin....oh god!

Russia and China but mainly Russia since they got hit hard with SWIFT sanctions during that Ukraine debacle. Ever since then they have worked twice as hard on a replacement.

That recent MAS and Kenya fintech event produced some interesting results: "Dubbed the “FinTech in the Savannah”, the inaugural Afro-Asia FinTech Festival saw Kenyan companies and Singaporean companies announce a suite of FinTech and technology solutions that were jointly developed with their counterparts. The solutions include a digital micro pension marketplace, a cattle insurance solution, a credit scoring solution, and an agreement to build a payments gateway between the two regions." Kenya is a gateway into Africa from the East. This is China's Belt and Road again going through MAS into Africa. https://www.mas.gov.sg/news/media-releases/2019/singapore-and-kenya-establish-fintech-cooperation-at-inaugural-afro-asia-fintech-festival

Plus it fits perfectly with China's Belt and road, notable Central bank RTGS systems revamp like the UK for example. Just too many things and its all speculation as you say

Just to add to this discussion. In the next 2 days there'll be a huge fintech festival held in Nairobi between the Central bank of Kenya and Monetary Authority of Singapore. At the moment, China is using MAS and UAE as their clearing houses for their belt and road plans. China is making huge in-roads across Africa with aggressive investment policies. They are building major ports, railways and superhighways in preparation for Africa's Free Trade Agreement Area. Africa will need interoperable cross border payments across services, countries and continents and a connection needs to be built to said clearing houses. Africa is dominated by mobile money and that is a game for innovative solutions like Mojaloop. The world demands an alternative to SWIFT and its slowly taking shape now. https://www.afroasiafintech.net/festival-speakers.php http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-07/19/c_137335521.htm https://www.gbm.hsbc.com/insights/growth/china-belt-and-road-financing-plugs-infrastructure-gap https://www.americanexpress.com/us/foreign-exchange/articles/china-belt-road-initiative-internalization-yuan/

"Synchronisation" will be the buzzword for the next few years. That "even playing field" cannot be achieved if everybody is designing their cars to work on the roads they themselves designed leading to different standards. One single highway to connect them all and let fintechs and banks duke it out in terms of service and price!

Probably some Chinese CEO of something or governor of their central bank or something