Crypto pundit Chain Cartel has raised several key points following SWIFT’s latest comment on its move to adopt blockchain technology. The pundit claimed that Ripple’s XRPL network best suits what SWIFT is trying to achieve and suggested that the two firms collaborate. 

Pundit Points To Ripple’s XRPL After SWIFT’s Announcement

In an X post, Chain Cartel stated that SWIFT admitted they are building Ripple’s XRPL network, but did not explicitly say so in their announcement. The pundit was referring to an X post from SWIFT highlighting their earlier announcement to add a blockchain-based ledger to their infrastructure.

The pundit explained that SWIFT’s language in the X post suggests that they want to build something like Ripple’s XRPL. He declared that it is not Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any generic blockchain experiment but precisely what Ripple has been building for a decade. Chain Cartel noted that Ripple’s model has always been a neutral settlement layer, real-time atomic finality, shared ledger visibility for institutions, interoperability with legacy rails, and liquidity-first design. 

Chain Cartel then alluded to SWIFT’s statement about its plans to build a blockchain-based ledger to be included in its payment infrastructure and provide a single source of truth, enabling instant, 24/7 cross-border payments. He declared that this is Ripple’s blueprints with the XRPL, as the crypto firm uses the network for its payment services. 

In line with this, the pundit remarked that SWIFT doesn’t replace rails, but instead coordinates them, and that Ripple doesn’t replace banks, but instead connects them. He added that SWIFT is acknowledging that the future payment stack requires a ledger layer, not just messaging, and that the only model already battle-tested at scale is Ripple’s XRPL.

However, it is worth mentioning that SWIFT doesn’t plan to integrate Ripple’s Ledger. Instead, it is building this blockchain-based ledger in partnership with Consensys and Chainlink. As such, although SWIFT may plan to build a network similar to Ripple’s XRPL, it intends to do so without assistance from the crypto firm. 

Ripple Looking To Expand Its Payment Service

Ripple is looking to expand its payment service, as it recently announced plans to begin testing its RLUSD stablecoin on Ethereum layer-2 networks Base, Ink, Optimism, and Unichain. The move comes just days after the OCC granted Ripple a conditional approval to become a bank, which is also a major boost for the firm’s payment service. 

Ripple plans to expand its RLUSD stablecoin beyond the Ethereum and XRPL networks to these layer-2 networks through its partnership with Wormhole. The firm noted that the future of crypto is multichain, which is why it is adopting this strategy. This move gives Ripple’s clients greater options when using the RLUSD stablecoin, and it could also attract new users to the stablecoin, which is currently one of the fastest-growing stablecoins. 

Bitcoin Magazine

MetaMask Launches Native Bitcoin Integration for 30 Million Active Users

Metamask, the popular Ethereum and DeFi wallet, announces Bitcoin integration as the company continues its expansion into multiple chains other than Ethereum. The wallet boasts 143 million downloads and over 30 million monthly active users, making it one of the most popular crypto wallets in the world.

Developed by Consensys, an Ethereum-born software development arm, Metamask has become a beast of its own, achieving massive success and adoption in the crypto industry. Having operated for over a decade, Metamask defined the user experience of in-browser wallets, copied by many of its competitors. Up until recently, Metamask was an Ethereum-only wallet, focusing on helping users move their wealth across Ethereum bridges, but in October, the wallet announced its planned expansion into Solana, and now Bitcoin has entered the list of blockchains it supports natively.

The Bitcoin integration was made possible in part thanks to the Bitcoin Development Kit, an open-source Bitcoin wallet library designed to make Bitcoin app development very easy.

Metamask’s Bitcoin integration marks a major milestone for the growing Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem, which was previously thought to be a niche only available to new blockchains like Ethereum, thanks to their smart contracting capabilities. In recent years, however, projects like Ordinals revealed that there are very powerful scripting tools available in Bitcoin, which drew the attention of DeFi developers across the industry.

As a result, a variety of layer two projects of all kinds have been launched, bootstrapping an integration and cross-collaboration between Bitcoin and the broader EVM-based (Ethereum virtual machine) DeFi ecosystem. Some examples of Bitcoin DeFi platforms include BOB, Botanix, Rootstock, and the Liquid Network. 

Metamask has also announced in October this year that it is preparing to go public in the U.S. markets, and has launched a variety of mainstream-facing features, such as a crypto-powered debit card or Metamask Card, in partnership with the Linea network, as well as “one of the largest on-chain rewards programs ever built”. 

This post MetaMask Launches Native Bitcoin Integration for 30 Million Active Users first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.