PDAX CEO Reveals: XRP, Stablecoins Favored by Remittance Firms to PH

• PDAX CEO Nichel Gaba has revealed that remittance companies (which are clients of the exchange) significantly favor Ripple’s XRP and stablecoins for sending money to the Philippines due to their seamless built-in systems and price stability.
• Gaba’s statement aligns with the 2021 research by analytics firm Messari, stating that 80% of PDAX’s volume is from facilitating remittances, leading to a high volume of XRP transactions.
• Ripple’s active involvement in the Philippines includes partnerships with local crypto exchanges, ongoing discussions with regulators.

PDAX CEO Nichel Gaba disclosed that remittance companies, a significant client base of the licensed crypto exchange, prefer using Ripple cryptocurrency for sending money to the Philippines. He noted that a substantial portion of the crypto inflow to the country is through XRP, Ripple’s digital asset, due to its seamless built-in systems.

“It’s very easy to figure out that a lot of flows into the Philippines are XRP flows. Remittance companies favor Ripple because it has built-in systems to make the process seamless,” Gaba told BitPinas in a live interview last July 12, 2023.

Apart from XRP, Gaba said remittance companies also like to use stablecoins. 

“Obviously with stablecoins, they don’t have to worry about price fluctuations,” 

As to why remittance firms in the cross-border money transfer industry use crypto:

“Instead of receiving dollars, which will take a few days to get converted, they receive crypto and we convert that to peso for them.”

January 2021 research on PDAX and XRP

Gaba’s statement is in line with the research done by analytics firm Messari in 2021, which mentioned that 80% of PDAX’s volume is from facilitating remittances for firms like MoneyGram. “Because of this, the aggregate volume of XRP-PHP on the PDAX is high,” the research concluded, also noting that PDAX is one of the main lobbyist for more crypto regulations in the Philippines.

Ripple in the Philippines

Ripple executive Brooks Entwistle previously visited the Philippines September of last year, to announce its partnership with i-Remit, another licensed cryptocurrency exchange. i-Remit, the BitPinas article stated, is an early adopter of Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity Solution (ODL), which, together with “RippleNet” was what Gaba was referencing at the beginning of the article.

The year prior, Enwistle revealed that they were engaged in ongoing discussions with local regulators, a process the executive believes is vital as the crypto industry continues to grow.

“We also are quite confidential in these discussions as the regulators are the other way as well. But the Philippines is absolutely a place where we believe in that relationship. And making sure that at every move we make in all that we’re doing is widely discussed and telegraphed and in accordance with local regulations is very important.”

Ripple in the News

The company scored a legal victory against the US Securities and Exchange Commission when a judge primarily ruled in favor of Ripple.

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that the selling of Ripple’s XRP tokens on cryptocurrency exchanges and via algorithms does not constitute “investment contracts.”

Previously, when the US SEC case against Ripple emerged, local exchanges publicly announced they were monitoring the situation. Bexpro immediately suspended all XRP pairs, and while PDAX did not delist its XRP-PHP trading pairs, it did suspend XRP-BTC trading at that time (though the platform cited limited liquidity as the reason).

The price of XRP is currently at $0.79, approximately ₱42, at the time this article was written.

This article is published on BitPinas: PDAX CEO Reveals: XRP, Stablecoins Favored by Remittance Firms to PH

Disclaimer: BitPinas articles and its external content are not financial advice. The team serves to deliver independent, unbiased news to provide information for Philippine-crypto and beyond.