Ripple (XRP) Was in the Room with IMF and World Bank In Bangkok

Finance ministers, central bank governors, and industry leaders gathered at the IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings in Bangkok. Ripple had a seat at the table.

Rahul Advani, Ripple’s policy lead, appeared on the Atlantic Council GeoEconomics Center’s panel on tokenized settlement markets.

The session addressed one of the most persistent questions in global finance: how regulation keeps pace with technology without fragmenting the liquidity that makes it useful.

Banks Are Already Moving

Xaif outlined three takeaways from Ripple’s participation. The first centers on how institutions actually evaluate stablecoins. Banks apply a concrete checklist. A stablecoin must be truly one-for-one, workable under Basel Committee capital requirements, liquid around the clock, and compatible with existing custody and treasury infrastructure.

Recognition is the Missing Piece

The second takeaway addresses the regulatory landscape. Issuer rules for stablecoins have largely converged across major jurisdictions. The U.S. GENIUS Act, the EU’s MiCA framework, and regulations in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan are increasingly aligned.

Cross-border recognition, however, has not followed. Xaif noted the risk, stating that without mutual recognition of regulated digital money across borders, the industry risks rebuilding fragmentation on entirely new infrastructure.

Advani echoed this in his post, describing it as “rebuilding fragmentation on new rails.” The technical architecture improves, but the coordination problem remains.

The Bigger Story

The third point reorients the narrative. Xaif stressed that the dollar versus non-dollar stablecoin debate is secondary. The real shift is the migration from fiat to onchain money. Advani explained that dollar and local-currency stablecoins do different jobs. One serves as the cross-border liquidity layer, and the other functions as the domestic settlement asset.

For that system to work at scale, both ends need support. Domestic issuance must be encouraged, and well-regulated foreign stablecoins must not be locked out.

Ripple’s Place at the Table

Advani also noted that dinner with Stefan Ingves, the former Governor of Sveriges Riksbank and former Chair of the Basel Committee, gave him the opportunity to discuss how the same capital rules that once applied to traditional finance now apply to stablecoins. The convergence is no longer theoretical.

Xaif’s post captured the significance of Ripple’s attendance clearly. Institutions at the highest levels of global finance are working through these questions in real time, and Ripple is in the room as they do it.