Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse recently blasted the slow transfer of gold worth $11 billion that the Central Bank of the Netherlands took months to move.
Garlinghouse was reacting to a news report as per which the Dutch central bank took around six months to transfer approximately 86 metric tons of gold from the U.S. and Canada to the U.K.
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As per the bank, over 25% of its gold reserves held in New York and Ottawa got shifted to London between March and August.
The Ripple CEO shared another news report from 2013 about Germany taking four years to transfer 674 tons of gold from vaults in Paris and New York to argue against the slow movement of assets that global finance still relies on.
There is a gap of 10 years between the two news reports, but central banks still use the same old system that they used in the 1940s. But the crypto market cap has grown from $1.5 billion to $2.7 trillion over the last decade, he added.
The instant and secure movement of assets at low cost is an "ideal use case" for crypto, Garlinghouse argued in the X post on Sep. 4.
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Garlinghouse took advantage of the occasion to talk about the XRP Ledger being tested by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) to accurately record and manage economic data.
Founded in 1930, the BIS is an international financial institution that is owned by members' central banks. Its primary goal is to foster international monetary and financial cooperation while serving as a bank for central banks.
The XRP Ledger is a blockchain network that was developed by Jed McCaleb, David Schwartz, and Arthur Britto and launched in 2012. The trio later helped establish OpenCoin, the company that became Ripple.
In simple words, a blockchain network is a decentralized, immutable digital ledger that enables the recording of data that cannot be altered later. Its decentralized nature ensures it isn't owned or controlled by a single individual or entity. Its immutability ensures that data can't be changed or deleted.
It is exactly for this purpose that the BIS said it tapped the XRP Ledger to test the recording of sample data. The bank concluded that the record management is very fast and the on-chain fees are negligible.
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This story was originally published by TheStreet on Sep 7, 2026, where it first appeared in the MARKETS section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.