The New York Times featured the Ripple Labs president in a recent special series on global consumer behavior in 2024.

“We asked a global group of entrepreneurs, business leaders and academics to assess consumer behavior,” wrote the Times.

Ripple President Explains Global Appeal of XRP

For her part in the series, Long makes the case that TradFi structures are “too slow to support” the current pace of global commercial growth. As a result, the developing world is turning to cryptocurrencies like BTC and XRP:

“In 2023, we saw reports from the International Monetary Fund and the Financial Stability Board specifically citing the ‘cryptoization’ of developing economies where, because of macroeconomic instability and weak inflation controls, people have begun to prefer cryptocurrencies to their local currencies.”

In addition to cryptos like BTC and XRP, the value of which is usually determined by the market’s behavior, Long said developing countries are turning to stablecoins. They provide merchants and consumers shelter from the volatility of some of their local currencies:

“In Argentina, Zimbabwe, and more recently, Nigeria, people increasingly are turning to crypto or U.S. dollar-backed ‘stablecoins’ rather than their volatile home currencies for saving and making purchases.”

Techopedia defines TradFi as “the mainstream financial system and the conventional institutions such as retail, investment, and commercial banks [ … ] that operate within it.”

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said, “Decentralized and traditional finance can thrive in tandem to fund renewable energy and other pressing needs, but only with clear standards and rules,” in a 2022 think piece entitled, “‘DeFi and ‘TradFi’ Must Work Together.”

Meanwhile, clear standards and rules are really all Ripp