Mercado Bitcoin to Tokenize Real-World Assets on XRPL Blockchain

Digital asset platform Mercado Bitcoin plans to tokenize more than $200 million in permissioned real-world assets (RWAs) on the XRP Ledger (XRPL).

A key contributor to the XRPL, Ripple, announced these plans in a Friday (July 4) blog post, saying this move marks one of the largest tokenization efforts by a Latin American institution on the XRPL, which is a public blockchain designed for the tokenization of RWAs.

Ripple is supporting Mercado Bitcoin’s integration onto the XRPL, according to the post.

Mercado Bitcoin is already one of the world’s top five tokenizers of private credit assets, and with its newly announced plans it will further expand its support of global liquidity and access to regulated digital products in South America and Europe, the post said.

The RWAs it will tokenize on the XRPL include fixed income and equity income instruments, per the post.

“Across Latin America, we’re seeing forward-looking institutions explore how tokenization can improve access and efficiency in financial markets,” Silvio Pegado, managing director, LATAM at Ripple, said in the post. “Mercado Bitcoin’s integration with the XRPL shows how public blockchain infrastructure is being trusted by institutions and is becoming a reliable foundation for bringing regulated financial products to the market.”

The tokenization of RWAs is driving a quiet revolution among traditional approaches across capital markets, PYMNTS reported in April.

By tokenizing RWAs, organizations and enterprises can take advantage of automated processes on various blockchains, which can reduce transaction fees, streamline settlement times, enhance operational efficiency, and make assets that are traditionally illiquid easier to buy, sell and trade on secondary markets.

When stablecoin-based finance company Schuman Financial integrated its EURØP coin onto the XRPL in May, Martin Bruncko, the firm’s founder and CEO, said the move would combine the resilience of a global blockchain “with euro-native liquidity and compliance at its core.”

Ondo Finance said in January that it would bring its tokenized U.S. Treasuries to the XRPL to offer institutional investors access to Ondo Short-Term U.S. Government Treasuries (OUSG). Ondo Finance Vice President of Partnerships Katie Wheeler said at the time that this integration would set the groundwork for “forward-thinking institutions to lead a new era of capital markets onchain.”