Ripple receives first BitLicense for B-side in New York State

At the beginning of last year, New York State began to require a license to engage in virtual currency activities. Ripple, in cooperation with the New York State Department of Financial Services, officially obtained the BitLicense (Bitcoin license) today, so that it can sell and custody XRP (Ripple currency) to institutional investors and financial institutions in New York State. XRP is the native digital asset in the Ripple Consensus Ledger.

Previously issued BitLicenses were all for consumer-side businesses only, while the BitLicense obtained by Ripple is the first license that can also be used for institutional applications (B-side).

“Obtaining the BitLicense is a recognition by a state regulator as influential as the Department of Financial Services that digital assets are being used in the institutional space,” said Chris Larsen, co-founder and CEO of Ripple. “I am very proud of the Ripple regulatory relations team led by Ryan Zagone. With the BitLicense, we look forward to working with banks in New York State to leverage XRP to gain liquidity and save costs.”

In the Ripple consensus ledger, XRP can be used to increase currency liquidity and reduce capital costs in cross-border payments. Instead of holding local currencies in bank accounts around the world, banks can use the Ripple network to consolidate all liquidity for international payments into an XRP account set up in their own balance sheet.

This single XRP asset pool allows correspondent banks to allocate less funds to handle the same international payment volume. Correspondent banks can save up to 42% of costs by using Ripple technology and XRP as a bridge asset. This cost reduction can reach 60% after the market fully adopts XRP.