By
Steve Muchoki
April 19th, 2024
SBI’s report also mentioned NFTs as a use case for the art community, pointing out Beeple’s $69 million record-breaking auction sale in March.
SBI (Strategic Business Innovator Group) Holdings (TSE: 8473), has expressed great optimism in the NFT sector as an opportunity for XRP Ledger (XRPL). Notably, SBI, a Japanese financial conglomerate – the largest external investor (8.76%) in Ripple Labs – released a report on this opinion Tuesday.
Entitled “Current Management Information Briefing”, the report concludes that Ripple’s crypto-asset, XRP, should be a choice for NFTs utilization. A section of the report dubbed “Building a More Sustainable, Scalable and Accessible Future for NFTs with XRPL”, stated that XRP has “extremely low transaction fees.” Additionally, SBI said the digital asset can be “settled instantly”. Its environmental impact would also be negligible since it did not depend on mining, making it the best choice.
“The blockchain XRP Ledger has the ability to tokenize not only XRP but also a variety of other assets,” SBI said in the report.
SBI’s report also mentioned NFTs as a use case for the art community, pointing out Beeple’s $69 million record-breaking auction sale in March.
“A blockchain certificate will ensure the authenticity of artworks as more reliable through a tamper-resistant and highly transparent blockchain mechanism,” the report read.
More so, the World Economic Forum forecasts that by 2027, 10% of global GDP would be tokenized. Citing this data, SBI reiterated the focus on tokenizing different assets.
“Achieving impact at scale across so many asset types will require the interaction of different blockchains and existing Internet and financial infrastructures,” SBI said.
SBI Backing XRP Ledger
The report expresses the immense backing of XRP, something that has been demonstrated in previous partnerships between the two. For instance, in May, SBI and Ripple joined forces to come up with SBI Ripple Asia. The joint venture introduced an international remittance service leveraging blockchain rails, becoming the very first of its kind in Cambodia.
Moreover, SBI reportedly announced to its shareholders in March, that those owing 100 shares or more would be awarded XRP worth 2,500 yen ($22.50). This was done as a way of showcasing gratitude to shareholders for their support. SBI’s is also arguably Ripple Labs’ most important partner in Asia.
Nevertheless, XRP and its two major executives, Brad Garlinghouse and Christian Larsen, remain sued by the SEC for fraud. The regulator argues that Ripple has sold over 14.6 billion XRP as securities rather than assets as claimed, since 2013.
Should XRP be deemed a security, its ownership would represent ownership of the company. Additionally, the two aforementioned executives would be banned from participating in any offering of digital asset securities. They would be liable to civil money penalties and would be required to “return their ill-gotten gains” spanning $1.3 billion.