SWIFT Chairman Says Cryptocurrencies Cause Extraordinary Change In Financial Industry
In what seems like quite the endorsement for cryptocurrencies, the Chairman of the global provider of secure financial messaging services SWIFT, said that cryptocurrencies are causing an extraordinary change in the financial industry. He also mentioned Libra, the project of social media mogul Facebook.
Worthy Mention And Endorsement
Speaking at the Sibos 2019 conference which took place in London on September 23-26th, the Chairman of SWIFT, Yawar Shah, made quite an endorsement for cryptocurrencies.
He said that they are driving an “extraordinary” change in the financial industry.
The Financial industry is undergoing an extraordinary change because of new entrants like Facebook’s Libra and the emergence of technologies like cryptoassets.
SWIFT is among the most widely used systems as it has already sent over 7.8 billion FIN messages and has over 11,000 institutions connected to it. It operates in over 200 different countries and territories.
The question is, however, if SWIFT is in danger because of the emergence of said technologies. Earlier this year, the CEO of Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse, said that XRP is actually contending the merits of SWIFT and that it is better than it, outlining that there haven’t been any significant improvements in the technology.
What Ripple is executing every day is to take over SWIFT. Currently, we’ve signed up over 100 swift-enabled banks that are now using the Ripple technology. The technology used by the banks today that Swift developed years back hasn’t really evolved or even kept up with the current market.
Facebook’s Libra A Threat To SWIFT?
Another thing to consider, especially after being mentioned by Shah, is Facebook’s Libra. The cryptocurrency envisioned by the world’s largest social media aims to allow its more than 2 billion users to transact in a peer-to-peer manner which would essentially eliminate the need of any intermediaries.
It’s questionable, however, if Facebook’s stablecoin will be able to do that as it needs to meet quite a lot of regulatory standards. As we’ve seen so far, legislators around the world are quite scrutinous and cautious about allowing the project to go forward.
In any case, it’s clear that cryptocurrencies are being recognized more and more and that even household names such as SWIFT are starting to recognize their merits and prominence.
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