Ripple President assessed the prospects for the crypto industry this year, 2026/01/21 10:15:59

Ripple President Monica Long said that this year will be a turning point for the industry – cryptocurrencies will finally integrate into the global financial system and will no longer be perceived as an alternative to traditional finance.

According to Long, stablecoins will become the core infrastructure of global payments, and will become the standard for 24/7 transactions, B2B settlements and financial security. The main growth will come from corporate payments, the volume of which already reaches $76 billion a year, which will allow companies to free up hundreds of billions of dollars of working capital.

By the end of the year, companies will have over $1 trillion in cryptocurrencies on their balance sheets, about 50% of Fortune 500 firms will develop full-fledged strategies for working with them, and up to 5–10% of settlements in the capital markets will move to an on-chain format, says the head of Ripple.

She emphasized that the storage of digital assets will become the main element of the institutional infrastructure, and more than half of the world’s largest banks will form new partnerships with the crypto industry.

By combining blockchain and artificial intelligence, mass automation of financial processes will be launched. Stablecoins and smart contracts will provide real-time liquidity and collateral management, and cryptographic technologies will enhance privacy and reduce regulatory risks, Long concluded.

Earlier, experts from the Swiss crypto-banking group Sygnum said that this year the number of countries creating cryptocurrency reserves will increase, and large financial companies will begin to tokenize bonds en masse.