Okay. Geez, it's nice of David Schwarz to open for us.
Yeah, he opened. I like that one. Standing. Oh, thank you, David. We like that. Let's lead it off a little bit, guys, and just get into and drill down first about the partnership. Okay. So, Roshan, let's kind of head with you. Give me an idea of how you guys first of all started to put this together and what it is. So, some people may not fully be aware.
Yes. So OKX has listed RLUSD on the OKX platform and what it means is that, and it's more than just a listing like I said before, right? In this case, it is bringing together the XRP community into the OKX ecosystem in a sense. RLUSD is becoming part of our unified order book and that unified order book ensures that folks trading on the RLUSD pairs actually has access to the full depth of liquidity that is available in the OKX order book. The other aspect is RLUSD can be deposited and withdrawn on the XRP ledger. You can interchange XRP with RLUSD and then use that RLUSD to sort of really trade accessing the depth of liquidity that you have in OKX across a multitude of products. So it is, in a sense, a juxtaposition of the XRP community with everything that OKX has to offer. I think it's also worth noting that RLUSD is being accepted as good collateral on the exchange. And so not only is that important just from the movement of money and value on the exchange, but importantly it's also being done on the XRP ledger which is really critical. So that opens up a lot of opportunities. It also, one of the things that I'm most excited about this partnership, it also invites in the Ripple Prime business where Ripple Prime is very active with customers together with OKX. So, we're really creating a flywheel across a lot of different products and really providing more value for our joint clients.
Jack, now that you know this has really kind of opened up, I think the wings for RLUSD to really start to accelerate. You look at the regulatory alignment right now for stable coins, especially with the OC starting to implement a lot of this stuff coming out of the Genius Act last year. What does this mean for RLUSD, especially, you know, with OKX? How do you see this kind of moving to the next level?
It's consistent with the origin story of why Ripple decided to get into the stable coin business. We had been a top five minter of USDC and USCT, you know, over the years and originally in our payments business, but then starting to be quite active with Ripple trading and markets and very importantly wanted to be aligned with the overall strategy of increasingly supporting institutional clients in regulated ways. And so the direction of travel even a couple years ago was towards being a regulated issuer. We went to New York. That was really the motivation behind the acquisition of Standard Custody and Trust, a New York Department of Financial Services qualified custodian. And post the Genius Act, which was a surprise. Frankly, we were already well underway in terms of our plans to issue RLUSD out of New York. Along comes the Genius Act and just further elevates the opportunity to be at a national level. We have initiatives elsewhere around the world to issue our stable coin and distribute it through licensed entities and I think about our overall journey and while some choose to skirt or avoid regulations we're quite the opposite and so we're really flocking to the most regulated jurisdictions or licenses that we can get because we believe that the next leg of demand is going to be institutionally driven and I think that's where you OKX spans, you know, tens of millions of customers, both retail and institutional, but I don't know, Roshan, if you'd agree with me, but specifically in stable coins, the zero to 300 billion has been largely retail driven, which is terrific, and that will continue to grow. But the 10x from here, we believe is going to be institutionally driven, right? And those institutions are really going to rely upon a gold standard of a stable coin issuer that is compliant, that is transparent, that is trusted, and has the licenses that we have.
Well, I think the scale too that you're rolling because right now it seems like you're coiling up like almost like a Viper ready to go into the market. What do you see in say 12 months, especially with OKX partnership now? This is really going to create not only demand, liquidity, but now opportunity to maybe scale this further. What would that look like in 12 months?
12 months from now, we'll be the number one stable coin on the OKX platform. So, that's a given.
Woo. I'm looking forward to that. And rightly so, right? Because I think this is really a very synergistic partnership and the reason why I'm saying that is Ripple has done a great job in building out that end-to-end payment infrastructure and then layering the right institutional infrastructure on top of that with Ripple Prime, Ripple Custody, and with compliance frameworks that are institution focused, right? And on our side we're building a state-of-the-art order book, a state-of-the-art exchange with tools that are really suited for institutional customers to come in and trade. This includes fast APIs, this includes credit products, this includes a number of systems that are really really important for institutions. So I think that synergy really works well. You know Jack mentioned the flywheel on his side. We have this institutional flywheel that we're building on our side and I think both those work hand in hand. I mean, I think what you're seeing if you take a step back is there's this convergence between the traditional finance and the web 3 digital asset space. And you know, we think a lot about evolution, not revolution that will happen over time, but you're seeing this convergence. And you think back to the Hidden Road acquisition that Roshan was employee number one together with Mark Ashen founding that business. And interestingly, that business at the time RIP acquired it was roughly 70% Tradfi customers and 30% web 3. But really the intention there is to be this bridge between traditional finance who want to come into the digital asset space but want to do a crawl walk run in some cases get comfortable with the type of infrastructure that they need to do that. And I think that's so consistent with what Ripple does today providing this infrastructure to be that bridge. The Ripple Treasury client base largely untouched, not touching I should say any digital assets before the acquisition. Today every one of the customers has access to a digital asset wallet and are already in motion about thinking about how stable coins can be used to help them accelerate their payments, instant settlement, lower the friction, lower the cost. And even if we abstract all that away from them, the future is very quickly coming to flow and everything we're doing has that institutional grade infrastructure in mind, but also doing it in a regulated way. And I think that's a lot of what Roshan, you're focused on.
I totally agree and you know 24/7 markets need instant stable coins for instant settlement and I think that collateral use case is really something that is a big part of your flywheel and I think that's something that we are really looking forward to see progress in the months and years to come.
Yeah, Jack, when you look at the frame of where Ripple is today and all of these strategic acquisitions lining up into the market, what would you say right now? Is there anything missing in that portfolio that helps you guys take it 10x?
It's a good question. I don't think there's anything obvious missing. However, I think we will continue to expand globally. I think we very much view this as a global opportunity. Ripple today 70 licenses around the world and growing and I think where that opportunity set takes us where we can see incremental advantage or accelerance through acquisitions we've proven obviously that we like to acquire where it makes sense so I think part of it would be a geographic kind of land and expand if there's a partner in a network in a jurisdiction where it makes more sense it could be a product road mile extension that would make sense. But as a bucket, if you, I love going back to the original mission and vision statement that Chris Larson and David Schwarz and others, you know, started really it's about moving the internet, moving value on chain the way, you know, the information moves today, which is a broad category. But it really encompasses collecting, holding, exchanging and paying out and doing that through an infrastructure lens. So that can evolve and mean different things, you know, to different people over time. For sure. Well, you guys, anything, the short answer is there's nothing obvious today that's missing to me.
Okay. And you guys have done a good job obviously internationally with the right kind of strategic partnerships. Now, this might open up, you know, what is being done with OKX here in the US, but also other potential partnerships that are starting to maybe lay the groundwork for the future. Anything you could share there here in the United States?
Specifically around the stable coin, nothing specific to share. I think we've done a very good job in a short period of time of really enlisting the support of pretty much all the major exchanges, save, you know, one or two. But we feel like, you know, job number one was to get the stable coin available. And so you had to build the infrastructure, the exchanges, the on-off ramps, in the payments business, the payment service providers and whatnot. And now it's really about building utility and creating a flywheel. And you know, to be candid, some would have argued that, you know, we were somewhat of a late entrant with Tether having 80% market share or 75% and Circle basically kind of having the rest. And we've shown in a very short period of time an ability to gain share and provide real utility. And I think we by design are separating ourselves from certainly from Tether from a standpoint of the institutional grade and brand and license that we're looking for. You know, they built their business largely in a retail emerging market segment. That's not the market we're focused on. And so we're going to continue to push really into the payments business and the capital markets business and need exchanges who are global, you know, to help us do that. There could be some niche exchanges in specific markets, but where we really lean in and get the leverage is to partner with someone like Roshan and OKX who admittedly I think has been stronger outside the US and your remit is to build the business in the US and I think we can help there and vice versa.
Roshan, in the release of the information where you guys did the partnership, you guys highlighted a few other areas. One in DeFi, also RWA. Talk to me a little bit about maybe the road map of where OKX is heading with that.
