On Tuesday, June 7, Sendi Young, Managing Director for Europe and UK at FinTech firm Ripple, explained during an interview why Ripple is continuing “to see strong demand.”

On 30 June 2021, Ripple announced Young’s appointment. Ripple’s press release stated that Sendi will “oversee strategy and champion the expansion of Ripple’s global financial network technology, RippleNet, which delivers financial solutions that enable customers to easily run and scale their business.”

This is what it said about Young’s background:

“With over fifteen years of experience in fintech, payments and consulting, Sendi joins Ripple following a five-year tenure at Mastercard, where she held leadership roles driving strategy, commercialisation, bank-fintech partnerships, and business development.

“Most recently, Sendi led the Fintech & Digital Segment globally for Mastercard’s Data & Services business and grew services that helped banks adopt real-time payments, Open Banking and Artificial Intelligence. Sendi brings with her deep industry and regional expertise which will be used to develop and further drive customer success across Europe.“

She had this to say back then:

“Over the last decade, I’ve been at the forefront of innovation in financial services and witnessed how technology has dramatically changed how we bank and pay. However, the underlying payments and banking infrastructure remain an obstacle to frictionless value exchange across borders and inclusion. I firmly believe that blockchain and crypto will be a game-changer to enhance today’s finance, by addressing its core inefficiencies.

“These technologies can make the global financial system fairer, more inclusive and more transparent – this is just the beginning of what’s possible and I’m excited to be joining such a talented and passionate team and a company that is at the forefront of this step-change.“

Young was interviewed by CNBC Europe anchor Karen Tso at this year’s Money20/20 Europe conference (held 7-9 June 2022 in Amsterdam).

Here is what she said about the state of the crypto market and how Ripple is doing:

“At Ripple, we are really focused on the long term utility, not the volatility. Since the early days, we’re really focused on solving real-world problems with crypto and blockchain technologies, particularly around cross-border payments, addressing things like transparency, cost, speed, reliability, and we’ve built a very strong cross-border network based out of that. So, I think we remain to be really bullish on that crypto-enabled future for financial services…

“The last 18 months have been the strongest period for us. We’ve doubled our payments network, we have hundreds of customers with a payment flow run rate of over $15 billion today. We continue to see strong demand because we are solving real-world problems, real pain points with these technologies.“

On May 24, Maria Bartiromo, the anchor of “Mornings with Maria” on American cable TV channel Fox Business Network (FBN), interviewed Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, who was attending the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

During this interview, when Bartiromo asked the Ripple CEO to share his thoughts on the crypto market, Garlinghouse replied:

“Well, two quick thoughts on that. There’s no question there’s been a lot of turbulence to the crypto market. I think if you zoom out, though, over the last two years, you have to remember the Bitcoin was at about $8,000 two years ago, and today it’s, as you just pointed out, around $30,000. So yes, in between there, it hit $60,000, but this is a new market.

“I think there’s certainly been a lot of excitement about what’s going on in the market, and then sometimes that excitement gets ahead of the reality. For Ripple, we’ve been very focused on how do we use these technologies to solve real problems for customers. And those are the kind of solutions that I think will scale, regardless of what’s happening to the turbulence and volatility of the market.“

She then asked Garlinghouse to comment on potential upcoming crypto regulation. He answered:

“First, I’ll say here in Davos, when I came four years ago, crypto was considered a bad word. Today, that is dramatically different. And frankly, our elected officials that are here in Davao are some of the people speaking most aggressively about that.

“But there’s no question that regulation around crypto is still trying to find a solid footing, and finding the right posture for the United States. The United States has really been behind other G20 markets like the UK, like Switzerland, like Singapore. They’ve really been leading in establishing a framework that works for both investors as well as entrepreneurs, who are taking advantage of these new technologies and building the next generations of Google and Facebook.“

Someone then asked Garlinhouse to comment on Tether and the assets that back $USDT. The Ripple CEO replied:

“As you point out, stablecoins have been in the news because that was one of the catalysts that really drove the market a couple weeks ago. An algorithmic stablecoin kind of melted down if you will. Tether is a considered a dollar-backed stablecoin. I’m not personally involved with it. So, I don’t know exactly how they are sharing those financials, but I think now more than ever the transparency that companies like Ripple have championed across the crypto industry are critical.

“That transparency for Tether, I think, is to really make sure the people participating, people buying, have access to whatever financial information they need to feel comfortable that ,in fact, it is dollar-backed…

“I think the whole industry needs to be more transparent. I think that applies to Tether. I think that applies to the whole industry. From the earliest days, Ripple and the XRP community, we’ve tried to lead by example. We’ve really tried to be the adults in the crypto room.

“And it’s the reason why I’ve come here to Davos and met with finance ministers from around the world, CEOs of banks around the world, to talk about how these technologies can actually solve real-world problems and reduce costs and improve the efficiency of particularly cross-border payments, an area that here at WEF they care a lot about and population that’s paying the most for remittance costs that can least afford it.“

Image Credit

Featured Image by “vjkombajn” via Pixabay.com