Swift’s decision to embed a blockchain-based, shared ledger into its core infrastructure has triggered a new round of soul-searching around Ripple’s strategy and the XRP Ledger’s utility. Announced at Sibos 2025 in Frankfurt on September 29, Swift framed the move as a “pivotal step” toward instant, always-on cross-border settlement at global scale—positioning its new ledger as an extension of two years of tokenization trials rather than a wholesale system replacement.

“Make XRP Great Again”

Against that backdrop, CoreNest Capital GP Bob Ras urged Ripple to rethink its roadmap. “So Ripple has been trying to replace SWIFT for years. SWIFT just added blockchain instead. The plot twist writes itself. What’s the next move? Maybe it’s the right time to pivot?” he wrote on X.

In a follow-up post he sharpened his critique: “Ripple has been all over the map: cross-border payments, then NFTs, then tokenization, now stablecoins. The core issue is XRPL itself. Without smart contracts it’s just not a friendly chain for developers, which is why you don’t see much serious building happening on it. Even the attempts to add smart contracts, like the grant to Axelar, haven’t really materialized.”

In anticipation of the expected pushback from the XRP army, he added: “Hate me or love me, the reality is, right now XRP doesn’t offer real utility beyond simple value transfers from one wallet to another. Any tokens can do that. For a project that once aimed to flip SWIFT, that’s not enough. Ripple needs a pivot toward true utility if it wants to stay relevant. MAKE XRP GREAT AGAIN!”

Ras’s remarks landed as Chainlink publicly congratulated Swift and underscored a multi-year collaboration that includes 2023 interoperability experiments using Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) and Swift’s messaging rails. Chainlink called the Sibos announcement “a landmark moment,” reiterating that oracles and messaging standards can bridge banks to public and pri

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Author: Jake Simmons