Today Societe Generale-FORGE (SG-FORGE) said it plans to launch its EURCV stablecoin on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) founded by Ripple. The company uses technology from Metaco for custody and Ripple acquired Metaco, so it’s now Ripple Custody. EURCV launched on Ethereum and already announced plans for Solana, so this will be the third blockchain. The launch is expected in 2025.
SG-FORGE cited the benefits of XRPL as speed, low transaction fees and scalability. However, there are other chains with similar features. It added that the blockchain is optimized for cross border payments.
“The XRP Ledger is the ideal platform to complement our existing deployments due to the combination of speed and cost-efficiency. Our decision to launch this stablecoin on this blockchain was driven by our desire to offer next-generation, compliant digital assets that promote transparency, security, and scalability,” said Guillaume Chatain, Chief Revenue Officer at Societe Generale-FORGE.
So far EURCV is relatively small with a market capitalization of €38 million. Four wallets control 90% of the balance, and only one of them has any transactions.
Good for XRPL. What’s in it for SG-FORGE?
Stepping back, this looks like a big win for Ripple from a brand credibility perspective. A few years ago, a handful of banks used RippleNet for cross border payments. However, despite their transactions being on a permissioned blockchain without the use of XRP, some of the banks were frustrated that their participation was conflated with using XRP.
With the acquisition of custody startup Metaco, Ripple acquired a large number of banking clients. While that might be good for Ripple as a company, it had little impact on XRPL. Until now.
However, SG-FORGE differs from some of Metaco’s other banking clients in two important ways. It has always been more innovative and embraced public blockchains from the start. After all, SG-FORGE helped the European Investment Bank launch its first €100 million digital bond on the Ethereum public blockchain way back in 2021. SG-FORGE even dabbled with MakerDAO borrowing millions of DAI backed by a SocGen issued security token.
A key reason it has more freedom to try these kinds of things is SG-FORGE is not a bank itself, unlike many of Ripple Custody’s traditional finance clients.
The bigger question is what’s in it for SG-FORGE? Should we read anything into the above quote about XRPL coming from the company’s Chief Revenue Officer?
If SG-FORGE is chasing institutional investors, one might expect it to go down a similar path to BlackRock’s BUIDL, which announced five new chains yesterday. They didn’t include XRPL. On the other hand, most institutions transact in dollars and XRPL has historically been used for cross border payments. Hence, SG-FORGE may have decided to give it a try in an attempt to find product-market fit.
Ledger Insights Research has launched a report on tokenized deposits and bank stablecoins, identifying more than 20 stablecoins.
