For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Monica Long, the president of Ripple, a blockchain-based digital payment network and protocol. Monica has spent the last 10 years at Ripple, working her way up from the director of communications to now, president. Ripple has been around since 2012 and is one of the oldest crypto entities. In recent years, it was in a legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from December 2020 until summer of 2023, over whether or not its token, XRP, should be registered as a security. Then, this past July, Ripple scored a victory against the SEC after a US federal judge ruled that secondary XRP sales, or sales to retail investors, aren’t investment contracts or securities. But when it comes to sales with institutional clients, it could be treated as one. In the meantime, Ripple had been doubling down on global transactions, payments and its ledger, among other elements.
For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Monica Long, the president of Ripple, a blockchain-based digital payment network and protocol.
Monica has spent the last 10 years at Ripple, working her way up from the director of communications to now, president. Ripple has been around since 2012 and is one of the oldest crypto entities. In recent years, it was in a legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from December 2020 until summer of 2023, over whether or not its token, XRP, should be registered as a security.
Then, this past July, Ripple scored a victory against the SEC after a US federal judge ruled that secondary XRP sales, or sales to retail investors, aren’t investment contracts or securities. But when it comes to sales with institutional clients, it could be treated as one.
In the meantime, Ripple had been doubling down on global transactions and payments, among other elements.
We talked about Monica’s career growth, cross-border payments, traditional finance and the need for regulatory clarity.
We also dove into:
Jacquelyn Melinek 0:01
Hey everyone, its Jacqueline melanic Welcome to chain reaction, a show that unpacks and dives deep into the latest trends drama and news with some of the biggest names in crypto breaking things down block by block for the crypto curious. Today's guest is Monica long the president of ripple, a blockchain based digital payment network and protocol. Monica spent the last 10 years at ripple working her way up from director of communications to now President ripple was in a legal battle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission from December 2020. until summer of 2023. over whether or not its token XRP should be registered as a security as some of our listeners know this past July ripple scored a victory against the SEC after a US federal judge ruled that secondary XRP sales, aka sales to retail investors are not investment contracts or what we commonly call securities. But when it comes to sales with institutional clients, it still could be treated as one. So that lawsuit is not over as both sides still have time to file briefs. And opposition's respectively by March and April. We'll see how that shakes out. But in the meantime, ripple has been doubling down on other things, of course, focusing on cross border transactions, liquidity, other big terms that I know we'll get into with all that said, Monica, welcome to the show.
Monica Long 1:17
Hi, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
Jacquelyn Melinek 1:20
Yeah, I'm excited. Have you had Stu on before, and he was the chief legal officer at ripple too. So I think our listeners know you guys pretty well now. But to start off, I want to talk about your career trajectory. I mentioned this in the intro a bit. But you started working in communications at ripple and now you're president. That's a pretty admirable shift. Can you kind of walk us through how you ended up to where you're at today?
Monica Long 1:41
Yes, I have a great story to tell. Because I mean, for me, it's been a phenomenal journey, career wise and life wise at ripple. The reason that I entered ripple so early in 2013, was I had known our co founder, and he's now our executive chairman at the time, he was the CEO, Chris Larson. Chris is a serial FinTech entrepreneur. So in the 90s, he co founded ie loan and then in the early aughts, he co founded prosper, which was one of the first peer to peer lending marketplaces, if we remember those. Yeah. All right, actually, I mean, they're still out there and doing a lot of good things. But when Chris was CEO of prosper, I worked at a public relations agency, and Chris is my client. So I met him back then he's like a true visionary, someone who has the gift of seeing around corners. And also, in my view, he like really is well grounded in terms of his mission and focus of the kind of change he wants to see in the world. So I was very inspired by him working on prosper, saw he founded ripple. And that's what was my entry point. So when I joined to lead communications, I mean, it was maybe a 10 person team. So that's that hover, the adage is the intersection of luck and opportunity. But I was just very lucky to join them. And then over time, as we started to identify our lane or the early days of ripple, it was really about this new technology, the XRP ledger, what are the different use cases for it? How can we see blockchain technology adopted and integrated into the world to solve real world problems and surgery to focus more and more on payments. So I then built our marketing team. And then from there led a team within ripple called ripple x, but really focused on supporting and growing the developer community around the ledger sets a ton of fun. And then just early last year, it was about a year ago that I took the post of president so honored to be able to lead this team. But yeah, we're we're now I'm responsible not only for ripple x, but also the other parts of the business, including payments and custody business, which we just acquired last year.
Jacquelyn Melinek 3:55
And when you're talking about ripples ledger, can you explain for our listeners, what you're referring to, because you're not talking about the ledger, crypto wallet, you're talking about ripples? Ledger? Right. I want to make the clarification Yeah. XRP
Monica Long 4:07
ledger? Yes. So yeah, the XRP ledger is something distinct from ripple. It was first developed in 2012. And it was always developed as a decentralized public ledger. It's an open source codebase, so anyone can really contribute to it and use it as well. And 1000s of developers around the world do. Interestingly, I think I might factor this, but XRP Ledger was either the first or second alt chain to launch. So Litecoin and XRP. Ledger launched right around the same time, right. But the developers envisioned a version of Bitcoin that would implement a novel consensus mechanism to achieve faster confirmation times a lower cost system that would scale to handle more transaction throughput, and also inventing the first decentralized exchange at the time. So from the beginning, the developers had thought A lot of blockchain and public Ledger's as a great way to represent and move and transact value all around the world. So they built this first decentralized exchange and the ability to issue tokens onto it. So we saw actually the first Stable coins coming through xOP ledger, as well as other types of tokens and forms of value. The last thing I'd say is today, the XRP ledger has been, you know, like enterprise grade, one of the few blockchains out there that has been proven to be used in enterprise applications, handling those types of volumes and still maintaining uptime. And yeah, it's used by I think I mentioned 1000s of developers
Jacquelyn Melinek 5:39
during your 10 years at ripple, you mentioned all these like first and big use cases, which one do you think has been the most attention grabbing by maybe mainstream audiences, and then the crypto audience when it comes to using ripple and these different products and services,
Monica Long 5:55
I think certainly what both the XRP ledger and ripple have been most known for is payments. I mean, that is by design that's, I mentioned, you know, the original creators of the ledger that they saw, hey, this could be a modern system for value movement that is as fast and free as email. So instead of like the analog of post office versus email, we've got banking system today versus what you can achieve on a blockchain with a decentralized exchange. So it was their vision, and we productized it for the enterprise and have worked with financial institutions to see that use case in real life. So I think that's the most like powerful one most interesting. When I said Chris could see around corners, I really mean it. I distinctly remember in 2013, he was talking about how we needed to get the word out about how autonomous corporations were going to be the story of 2014, which, at the time, I didn't realize that he was talking about dowels. Okay, which today, that concept is certainly interesting, and maybe even more interesting in even richer now thinking about the developments in AI. I think there's just a lot going on in the world of blockchain and web three. That is a little mind bending. Yeah,
Jacquelyn Melinek 7:15
for sure. You talked a bit about how main part of ripples products is payments, specifically cross border payments, Monica and like, this is something that hits home for me, because I have family in London and like sending the money is like chaos, and I have to like wire it, I have to use different banks get their account numbers, like I just don't want to do that ever. And I'm like, can I just give you cash? And they're like, No, I don't want your cash. And then I don't want their money. But anyways, all of this happens. And I'm sure you understand this. And like my family lives in London. So that's like a strong financial hub. But then there are people who don't have that at all. So how do you kind of see crypto based cross border payments, fixing what already exists? And like the financial sector that most people transact in today?
Monica Long 7:57
Yeah, you nailed it. It's a headache. And it's also stressful, like, right, just knowing that you have all the information correct, when the payment doesn't get there, which happens, you know, a single digit, sometimes double digit percentage of time, it is problematic for individuals that can be in an emergency, a crisis in certainly for businesses. So I think what blockchain lens payments is one blockchain is a global network out of the box, right, so you have a network run by decentralized validators, or operators that can represent value and then settle that value anywhere in the world instantly, and, in some cases, nearly for free. So depending on which ledger you're using, it can be very, very cost effective. And then the other thing kind of like the hidden costs or opportunities to payments today, one the point on reliability and transparency, because cross border payments today are dependent on different banks and intermediaries to connect these disparate networks. So like the US network and England's network, with all the other networks in the world. And every intermediary is a point of opaqueness or obfuscation from the endpoint of where you want your payment to land. And it's also a point of risk or failure. So, again, something that blockchains are inherently good at is transparency and showing you that end to end of exactly what's happening through a transaction. If it settles in real time, then you have that assurance that your money got there when you wanted it to. The last point I would make is just today foreign exchange is pretty concentrated in terms of the players who actually have enough capital to try the liquidity for those transactions. So when you have a lot of concentration, you have lack of competitiveness, for the pricing in into the future when we think of people in the world of blockchain solving problems like know your customer or other types. of compliance requirements in a decentralized environment, then you can see more participants acting on or providing liquidity on these decentralized exchanges, you can see a real monumental shift in the end and costs of those types of transactions. Let's
Jacquelyn Melinek 10:16
make up a scenario where like maybe in five to 10 years, maybe sooner for being optimistic, the traditional financial world becomes more decentralized and makes global transactions easier than what we just discussed. What kind of role do you think ripple would have in that arena? Or do you think it's a separate world?
Monica Long 10:33
So that is a beautiful picture, you just I think it's also inevitable.
Jacquelyn Melinek 10:39
We have flying cars. Yeah.
Monica Long 10:42
I don't know what planet we might. Maybe it's intergalactic payments at that point. I think it's inevitable at this point, because people have said, like the genies out of the bottle with blockchains. And this is something that I do think that a key thing as an industry we need to see is workable regulatory frameworks, workable regulations, so that we can bring these innovations to market. But I think that's definitely going to happen. The role of ripple I see as an infrastructure technology provider sounds humdrum, if I put it that way, but the exciting part of it, to me is the scale of impact that we can have at the infrastructure layer. Because we worked on this payments problem for so long, we had to solve a lot of nuts and bolts or plumbing issues related to marrying crypto blockchain technology with the existing systems. So by that, I mean things like on and off ramps, right, you know, getting money from real world into crypto and back out into local bank accounts, solving for liquidity, solving for her secure costing of assets, solving for compliance. So all these kinds of heavy lifting unsexy things that you really need, in order to do what you just said, like provide a killer, like the Venmo app of that future world, or lending or mortgages or you think of all these financial use cases, I think that we will be the provider of that infrastructure tech.
Jacquelyn Melinek 12:17
I'm glad you brought up the little regulatory piece as well, the little as if that's not like the massive theme in crypto right now, right? We've talked to many people building in the crypto space that think it's easier or smarter sometimes to build outside of the US because of the quote unquote, lack of regulatory clarity here. Do you think this is also driving for emphasis on this globalization and cross border payments situation as well? Or do you think it's not as much of a problem in the US for that specific sector? I
Monica Long 12:45
think that for all types of crypto applications today, there are places outside of the US that have much clearer regulation for us to like, know how to properly build and work with the government, then in the US, the US is on more of the end of the spectrum of stifling new developments and innovation in the world of crypto. You mentioned at the top that our case with the SEC last year, I do think that that was defining not just for our company, but for the industry in terms of how the US government is going to view and treat crypto assets, which in that ruling does was super clear, like XRP, in and of itself is not a security. It has to do with how it is packaged and brought to market. I think that has been very helpful. But I still think it'd be more helpful to see clear laws coming from Congress. Right?
Jacquelyn Melinek 13:44
Do you think XRP being deemed not a security for retail investors is leading to a higher rate of adoption?
Monica Long 13:51
That is a good question. What I have observed is XRP, along with a lot of crypto assets. I've more observed a consistent trend line of the market all kind of ebbing and flowing together. And of course over the past several months, that has mainly been speculation and excitement or lack thereof around the Bitcoin ETF. So the markets kind of been moving more together versus in a segmented fashion.
Jacquelyn Melinek 14:18
Yeah, we've definitely been hearing all the conversations about the potential or the bull market that we might be and I don't know, who knows, I don't want anyone to come at me with pitchforks. So go crypto, whoo. But how would you compare the ripple versus SEC lawsuit to the other ones that you've seen in the crypto space in the past year or two? I mean, the situation has been going on for years. Do you think ripple has been treated fairly in the US? How do you kind of expect this all to pan out in the future?
Monica Long 14:45
So in terms of the lawsuit, we're pleased with, you know how that has all resolved itself. Just having that clarity and that July order from the judge of seeing that XRP is a digital assets not as Security gave us so much clarity of how we can operate and how we can use it as part of our products. So that was really great outcome. The years prior to that where we were going through the lawsuit was really difficult to make progress and do business here in the US. So as a result of that, or related to that, we really saw most of our growth happening outside of the US. And it goes back to like, where regulators are clear about their frameworks, how they treat crypto, there's a lot more progress that you can make on the adoption side. But I think that some of the other recent cases, like even with greyscale, the SEC has declared a war on crypto, and I don't see them winning that war. You see each of these battles being won by the industry. And so we'll see what that adds up to, but it doesn't seem to be going their way.
Jacquelyn Melinek 15:50
Maybe the spot Bitcoin ETF is a little white flag waving in there.
Monica Long 15:55
I like that. Yeah, let's go not to jinx anything but fingers crossed. All
Jacquelyn Melinek 16:00
right, Monica, we're gonna take a quick break before we get into the rapid fire segment.
And we are back now it's time for our rapid fire segment where I will ask Monica some questions. And hopefully she gives us some quick responses. To start. Monica, what is one skill you learned working in communications, aside from communicating that you now employ in your leadership position? Good
Monica Long 16:28
mind transparency. And that's interesting, because it's like, is that a lesson from communications? Or is that more of a cultural right? Yeah, maybe it's more of a value, like a value that I inherited from our leaders like Chris and Brad garlin house is our CEO. He has been for several years. But transparency and truth at all times, whether you're communicating externally or internally, yeah, to treat people like adults and to just be straightforward. Okay,
Jacquelyn Melinek 16:59
that goes into the next question. Then when thinking about ripples past, present, and future, what are three words you would use to describe it? Oh,
Monica Long 17:07
I would say a journey. Ooh,
Jacquelyn Melinek 17:11
I like that.
Monica Long 17:13
I feel like I'm I'm overthinking things, but give me a minute. Okay.
Jacquelyn Melinek 17:16
Don't worry, we won't tie this to forever.
Monica Long 17:20
Opportunity. And transformation. I like it. Would you like me to explain them? Or just leave it at that?
Jacquelyn Melinek 17:28
You know, I'll give you that you could explain. This is rapid fire. Monica will let you I'll let you expand. Yeah, I'm
Monica Long 17:36
already failing. Okay. I think journey opportunity and transformation, just to say that, because you know, I've been a part of it for 10 years company's been around for 11. And you know, the industry a little more than that. But obviously, there's been a lot of twists and turns, crypto generally has been a roller coaster ride. Yep. But I say like opportunity transformation. Because the reason this industry is here to stay, and certainly ripple as a fixture is that what we're seeking to do and what we're seeking to change will be really transformational for the whole financial industry and the billions of people around the world.
Jacquelyn Melinek 18:13
Okay, I'll take it. That was good. What is one area of ripple isn't focused on that you think could be fun to explore one day, you
Monica Long 18:20
know, something that's definitely bubbling up around every corner in the past years, then real world asset tokenization? All
Jacquelyn Melinek 18:27
right. Which other blockchains do you admire?
Monica Long 18:30
Ethereum? Absolutely. Bitcoin? I think polygon two has made some really great strides, you know, on the layer two side,
Jacquelyn Melinek 18:39
what other countries outside of the US do you think have the clearest crypto regulation? I guess the US doesn't even have the clearest but which ones do you think do?
Monica Long 18:50
Singapore I think Europe and the UK, Dubai. Those are some that come to mind.
Jacquelyn Melinek 18:56
Do you think we'll see crypto regulation or clarity in the US in 2024?
Monica Long 19:02
Yes, I'm an optimist.
Jacquelyn Melinek 19:04
We love that. We love optimism. We need more of that in crypto. Yes or no last question on this round. Monica, do you think payments will be the biggest blockchain use case long term? I think that's a
Monica Long 19:15
yes. Yes. I fully believe that ripple and otherwise relatedly
Jacquelyn Melinek 19:20
jumping off the rapid fire. Now. We talked a bit about the ledger in the beginning. But how do you think it is built for payments or businesses to kind of optimize things? Hmm.
Monica Long 19:29
So the way that the ledger confirms transactions, the way it was designed means that it's very fast, very, very low cost, highly scalable. And those factors together mean that I think it can support a wide variety of use cases it has a lot of built in features and functionality to we talked about the DAX but also has things like auto bridging and trust lines which are valuable for efficient transactions as well is useful for things like compliance So I think those are just some of the inherent features that make it really attractive for enterprise use
Jacquelyn Melinek 20:06
cases. And how does that kind of tie it all in with ripples payments? And,
Monica Long 20:10
yeah, so for our payments application, the way that we deliver payments for customers, the payments are facilitated using XRP for the fast settlement times, and then something we are currently working on is actual integration of our payments application into the XRP ledger is decentralized exchange. So that would be using the full set of capabilities of the decks through our payments application.
Jacquelyn Melinek 20:38
And with everything we kind of talked about here, Monica, we talked about payments, we talked about the ledger, we talked about a bunch of different areas, I want to know what is ripples, big focus for 2024. If you could fast forward 12 months and be like, This is what we accomplished? And I'm extremely proud of it. What would that be? Yeah,
Monica Long 20:55
we have this longer term vision of being that enterprise infrastructure provider building in such a way that we're able to offer things like on and off ramp and crypto liquidity custody compliance, all these features sets together for a variety of enterprise use cases, you could think of it like for Amazon to then offer AWS payments was ripples flagship, and we're now able to offer our version of AWS but it's for crypto. And so toward that a big thing in 2024 to look for is how we're integrating payments and custody since the business that we acquired last year Medeco. And yeah, I think that's how you'll kind of see the evolution of our business.
Jacquelyn Melinek 21:37
Right, awesome. My last question for you, Monica is Can you leave us with a piece of advice, maybe something you've brought with you throughout your career? Well,
Monica Long 21:45
I think when crypto hits crypto summer, it's hot, and everyone wants to be a part of this industry. And I definitely have noticed in this latest winter, even the the pitch decks from different developers that we used to see, you know, maybe back in 2022, that were all about web three, they now flipped to AI as the headline of what they're selling. Right? They
Jacquelyn Melinek 22:09
might be coming back now.
Monica Long 22:11
So yeah, yeah. So don't Don't be the sheep that follows the herd in the times of winter, you could see that, I guess my advice is to lean into the future. I know that right now. regulatory climate, where's the US gonna fall? You know, is the ETF gonna get approved? Like, where does the world stand on crypto blockchain? Also, frankly, just in the wake of some of the big headlines around finance and FTX. There's this kind of cloud over the industry. But taking on risk comes great reward. And I think that, from a purpose standpoint, being a part of building this future is really meaningful. Yeah.
Jacquelyn Melinek 22:50
I agree with you on that. Monica, thank you so much for coming on the show today. It was great to have you.
Monica Long 22:55
Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.
Jacquelyn Melinek 23:00
We'll be back next week with conversations around what's going on in the wild world of web three with top players in the crypto ecosystem. You could keep up with us on Spotify, Apple Music or your favorite pod platform and subscribe to our companion newsletter, also called chain reaction. Links to the newsletter and stories we talked about can be found in our show notes. And be sure to follow us at chain underscore reaction on Twitter. Chain Reaction is hosted by myself Jacqueline melanic and produced by Maggie Stamets with assistance from Nishad Kulkarni and editing by Kel Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator and Henry pick Yvette manages TechCrunch audio products. Thanks for listening in. See you next time.
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