Ripple Launches Liquidity Hub to Allow Customers to Buy, Sell and Hold Crypto Assets

Liquidity Hub has been used internally by Ripple for 2 years, and will be made available to external customers in 2022.

November 09, 2021 - Ripple has announced that it intends to launch a solution for enterprise customers wanting to seamlessly access crypto assets from a variety of global venues, including market makers, exchanges, OTC desks - Ripple Liquidity Hub. The solution is planned to also provide access to decentralised venues. According to the announcement the company says that, "The product will support turn-key integration and smart order routing to source digital assets at optimised prices giving customers the ability to easily buy, sell, and hold crypto assets." Ripple Liquidity Hub will launch in 2022.

At launch, the new hub will support BTC, ETH, LTC, ETC, BCH and XRP, with availability varying by geography, with plans to expand to more tokenised assets. In the future Ripple plans to add additional features such as support for staking and yield generating functionalities.

For nearly two years Ripple has leveraged Liquidity Hub for internal liquidity management as part of its On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) product, powering millions of transactions, worth billions of dollars. Now Ripple will make the product available for its hundreds of customers globally, as well as any financial institutions, banks, fintechs or corporates who need support preparing for an inevitable crypto-first world.

RippleNet GM Asheesh Birla said, “We understand firsthand the need for easy and efficient liquidity management – and as such, we’ve received questions from our customers who are in need of solutions that can be a one-stop-shop to buy, sell and hold crypto assets. The combination of Ripple’s crypto DNA and long history working with financial institutions makes us uniquely positioned to address this problem for our customers as they prepare for a tokenized future.”

Ripple states that Liquidity Hub is designed for enterprise customers and their unique needs.

Easy onboarding: Offers a streamlined API for accessing digital assets from a breadth of liquidity pools allowing enterprises to easily integrate with Liquidity Hub and begin offering customers trading services, enabling new revenue streams.

Optimised pricing: Provides optimized, aggregated pricing for a breadth of digital assets, enabling enterprises to provide their customers with the best price from a variety of liquidity venues.

Access to capital: Enterprises won’t be required to pre-fund accounts for Liquidity Hub and can receive access to working capital through Ripple to fund their business operations.

Ripple’s first partner of the alpha product is Coinme, the largest licensed cryptocurrency cash network in the U.S., with thousands of locations across the country. Initially, Coinme will utilise the underlying technology platform of Liquidity Hub, with plans to unlock additional functionality as it becomes available.

“Coinme offers convenient and simple access to exchange cash for crypto. Managing this extensive network requires around-the-clock access to liquidity 24/7/365 so we can provide the best prices to our customers for a variety of assets. We’re excited to partner with Ripple to bring these benefits to our customers and business,” said Neil Bergquist, CEO of Coinme.

Ripple was the first enterprise company to leverage crypto to tackle the trillion-dollar challenges with cross-border payments. Since then, Ripple has expanded from a cross-border payments network to a platform providing tokenised services that will bring crypto capabilities to the enterprise and prepare them for a future where crypto is front and center. Liquidity plays a critical role and underpins any experience in crypto.

In the future, every customer will join RippleNet with the same base service and a wallet designed to support both crypto and fiat. By adopting this technology, customers can take advantage of the latest blockchain-enabled solutions that keep them at the cutting-edge – the platform is designed to seamlessly upgrade and add new services as customers want them. Customers will be able to use their Ripple-enabled wallet to custody anything that’s tokenised.

RippleNet recently just closed out its best quarter to date announcing more than 20 markets available for On Demand Liquidity (ODL) with new deployments in Japan and the Middle East, as well as more than 25x growth for its international flows on its network.

The launch of Liquidity Hub is pending applicable licensing and other requirements. Availability will vary by jurisdiction.