Ripple partners with Colombia’s central bank to explore blockchain technology

The pilot program will run through 2023 with the intent of demonstrating blockchain utility to the general public.

Banco de la República, Colombia’s central bank, is partnering with Peersyst and Ripple to pilot blockchain technology on the XRP ledger. 

The Ministry of Information and Communications Technologies (MinTIC) in Colombia will oversee the project, which will use Ripple’s recently launched central bank digital currency (CBDC) platform.

Ripple and @Peersyst are partnering with Colombia’s @BancoRepublica in conjunction with @Ministerio_TIC to pilot use cases that will enhance Colombia’s high-value payment system.

Learn more about the partnership: https://t.co/X9jyJ3pvDa

— Ripple (@Ripple) June 15, 2023

An announcement published on June 15 says the pilot will run through 2023 and states that its purpose is to demonstrate the technology’s utility to the public:

“The goal of the third phase of MinTIC’s experimentation of blockchain will be to educate national and territorial public entities through interactive and collaborative real-world application experiments of how blockchain technology’s unparalleled speed, scalability, and transparency can revolutionize payment systems and data management.”

The XRP ledger CBDC platform also serves as the basis for similar pilot projects in Hong Kong, Bhutan, Palau and Montenegro.

CBDC team making significant progress with the launch of the new #cbdc platform Four countries now announced Grateful to the team at @Ripple who are developing the best platform for the future of Digital Currencies Palau Bhutan Montenegro Hong Kong …

— Antony Welfare (@AntonyWelfare) May 19, 2023

Ripple’s continued growth comes amid ongoing legal challenges stemming from a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) suit against the company filed in 2020.

The SEC alleges that Ripple sold $1.3 billion worth of unregistered securities in the form of its XRP (XRP) token. Ripple claims that XRP isn’t a security and that the SEC never gave it any notice or warning.

Related: The SEC vs. Ripple lawsuit: Everything you need to know

As Cointelegraph recently reported, the company also claims it spent $200 million defending itself from the suit. While there’s currently no definitive answer to the question of when the trial will end, it’s widely believed that the release of the so-called “Hinman documents” could affect the remaining legal proceedings.

The Hinman documents reference internal SEC communications related to a 2018 speech given by William Hinman, the former director of the SEC’s corporate finance division. During the speech, Hinman commented that cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) might start out as securities but could become commodities later once they become sufficiently decentralized.

At the time, internal SEC notes indicated that the commission was concerned Hinman’s comments could make it “difficult for the agency to take a different position on Ether in the future.”

While Himan’s speech was given before the SEC’s suit against Ripple and didn’t directly reference XRP, experts argue that it shows that even the SEC understood there was confusion surrounding the agency’s treatment of cryptocurrencies.