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Ripple, a San Francisco-based blockchain payments company, has joined the Digital Pound Foundation, a non-profit organization supporting the implementation of a digital pound in the United Kingdom, according to a Ripple blog post.
Fast facts
- As a foundation member, Ripple will be represented on the board by Susan Friedman, Ripple’s head of policy. Other foundation member companies include Billon Group, a U.K.-based enterprise distributed ledger technology system provider, and CGI, an IT and business consulting services firm.
- Ripple’s involvement in the foundation comes as central banks around the world increasingly explore central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) amid the rise of private cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and stablecoins like Tether’s USDT. A survey of central banks by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) found that 86% were actively researching CBDCs, 60% were experimenting with the technology and 14% were deploying pilot projects.
- Currently embroiled in a lawsuit with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over its alleged unregistered securities offering of XRP worth over US$1.38 billion, Ripple has been trying to expand and diversify its blockchain payments business to CBDCs, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralized finance (DeFi). Last month, Ripple announced that it was working with Bhutan’s central bank, the Royal Monetary Authority (RMA), to pilot a CBDC using Ripple’s CBDC Private Ledger.
See related article: Ripple expands XRP into NFTs amid escalating legal battles