XRP Ripple Major 5-Digit High-Rise Expansion in Chicago + BlackRock, Circle & SWIFT Aggressive Moves

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Hey, hey everybody. It's Eddie from Tokyo. This is your cryptocurrency update from Japan. And it's the start of a new week. And I will tell you, it's pretty good start because Ripple, who's been building for over a decade, is finally making some inroads into that institutional world that is going to have a big impact on the digital asset XRP. And I'm talking about Ripple Prime.

[00:00:26]They have secured a 200 million assetbacked debt facility from Newberger Burman. And why that matters is because they specifically said that they use the digital asset XRP, Solana, Ethereum, and Bitcoin. It is all about collateral trading in my opinion. And in Ripple's words, they say dependable access to financing is critical. This is real institutional infrastructure that's getting stronger and I feel very encouraged. Let me now share with you some exclusive news. This is based on my research and I broke it on X that Ripple is expanding to Chicago. Yes. And along with that expansion of course comes new hiring. They're making a real statement in Chicago by their advanced talks to lease over 50,000 square feet at 300 North Lal Street in River North. And it is a downtown location where the market space has been a little bit soft and struggling with this remote work and empty buildings for a while. But it stands out as one of the more active and positive leasing stories right now in the area. The 60story building, yeah, it's a big one, has 1.3 million square feet and it just finished a 37 million update, a remodel if you will, with a new lobby and a beautiful indoor and outdoor terrace right on the Chicago Riverwalk. So, after losing some big law firm tenants, the building has fought its way back to um looks like about a 70% leased space. And that's pretty good. Ripple looks poised to give uh some of that even a bigger boost. And from my research, I think it's linked directly to their $1 billion acquisition of G Treasury last year because they're an Illinois based company very very close to that area. The Ripple um open rolls, if you will. There's 18 open positions that are listed for the Chicago area. So that's 18 out of I believe it was 111 open roles. One key role is the sales operations specialist on the revenue operations side for that team Ripple. And they're focused on turning data into actionable insights, building forecasts, uh, spotting opportunities, and driving real revenue growth alongside their sales, marketing, and customer teams. And then we have Circle, who has closed a $222 million private token sale for their brand new layer 1 blockchain called ARC. The round was led by A16Z with major participation from BlackRock and who else of course SBI Group. They are always in the mix, aren't they? This is the financial conglomerate from Japan and Mr. Ktow is just a maverick. Now ARC is going to be an EVM compatible chain with a new consensus mechanism called Malachite and it delivers listen to this subsecond finality purpose-built for realworld transactions and payments.

[00:04:10]They are going to specialize in tokenized deposit and separately there is also some big movement. Yes, I'm talking about swift the global network that powers trillions in daily crossber payments. It's advancing in its own blockchainbased shared ledger. This new ledger is designed for real world transactions, payments using again tokenized deposits, and they're going to incorporate multiple settlement options.

[00:04:43]The MVP is scheduled to go live this year, stepping directly into blockchain rails to enable faster 24 by7 interoperability between tokenized assets and traditional banking systems.

[00:04:57]This chain is EVM compatible. What that means is it's going to use the Ethereum virtual machine smart contracts. It's based on Bessu Hyperledger technology.

[00:05:08]Also this week, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bassant met with Japan's finance minister that is Katyan and they reaffirmed the strong US Japan economic partnership and discussed reducing excess currency volatility, critical minerals and investment cooperation.

[00:05:30]When the world's largest economies are coordinating closely, efficient crossber payment solutions become yeah even more valuable. And on the retail side, we have Moon Pay. They have acquired Dawn Labs, giving everyday users powerful AI trading agents. No more needing teams for quantis or developers. anyone can build their own smart AI trading squad that's going to bring more people and liquidity into the market. So zooming out, we're seeing heavy hitters like BlackRock, A16Z, SBI Holdings in Japan, Newberger, Burman, Swift, and governments actively investing in and building blockchain infrastructure focused on speed, real utility, compliance, and tradi integration. This is the exact direction Ripple and XRP have been focused on since the beginning, and we're watching it execute and unfold in real time. XRP community, this is why patience and conviction pay off. Drop your thoughts in the comments because I read everyone.

[00:06:47]Thank you for watching and until next time, do take care. Sayara for now.

[00:06:52]Bye-bye.

[00:06:54]>> Hi. Good morning. Morning.

[00:06:55]>> Second day. How are you?

[00:06:57]>> Good. Thank you again for dinner.

[00:06:59]>> Yeah, that was excellent. And we had a discussion. I had a discussion with prime minister this morning.

[00:07:04]>> Okay, good.

[00:07:04]>> Until just now. Okay. So, why don't we take photo again?

[00:07:20]And your coffee is arriving.

[00:07:22]>> Good. Thank you.

[00:07:29]Yeah. Welcome back to Ministry of Military Finance.

[00:07:33]>> I was trying to think how many times I've been here and did many visits, >> met next door at the Post Bank.

[00:07:39]>> Yeah.

[00:07:40]>> And then and then walked over here.

[00:07:41]>> Yeah. those with financial mis.

[00:07:45]>> Yes.

[00:07:46]>> And last time you arrived here is in the photo and it was in October and that was the day when Nikk passed 50,000. Yes.

[00:07:56]>> Now today it's also rising.

[00:07:59]>> Yep. Well, we had the Dow Jones is at 50,000. So, we're all in good company.

[00:08:11]>> As we discussed yesterday, Japan and United States alliances by far the best for the time being and we would like to continue it a long time and our two economies are going very well.