Ripple Sees $30 Trillion in Assets Move On-Chain by 2030

By Daniel Okafor

About $30 trillion in assets is projected to move on-chain by 2030, Ripple Asia-Pacific sales director Lee Eun-jin said on Nov. 11 while speaking at “The Stablecoin Era: The Future of Cross-Border Payments in South Korea” at Yeouido Post Tower in South Korea.

Lee framed the figure against the practical limits of stablecoin adoption. In his assessment, stablecoins can support real-world financial transactions only if traditional finance and blockchain systems connect seamlessly. A blockchain rail by itself does not remove the operational dependencies of a payment.

What has to connect?

Lee identified four elements required to make interoperability work across financial institutions, blockchains and payment systems:

• Cross-chain asset transfers, allowing assets to move between different blockchains.
• Cross-asset links between assets and settlement payments.
• Cross-compliance with financial regulations, including customer identity verification and anti-money laundering requirements.
• Foreign-exchange conversion and sufficient liquidity across currencies.

The list also separates two issues that cannot stand alone. Cross-chain capability addresses movement between ledgers, while cross-asset capability addresses how assets relate to settlement payments. Neither resolves compliance or foreign exchange by itself; Lee presented them as complementary controls within one payment system.

The four-part framework extends beyond technical connectivity. It treats verification, regulatory controls and currency execution as part of the same infrastructure required to move value. A transfer may reach a blockchain quickly, but the surrounding financial process still has to establish that the parties and transaction are permissible, convert value where required and settle the payment.

What changes for cross-border payments?

Lee said cross-border payments provide one of the clearest tests of interoperability because stablecoin use does not end at the blockchain boundary. Customers still need conversion into local currencies, while providers need enough buy-and-sell liquidity to handle both sides of a transaction.

That makes liquidity a service-level requirement rather than a secondary market feature. If a customer cannot convert or obtain local currency when needed, the speed of the on-chain leg does not determine the actual experience of the payment. The same applies to compliance: identity and anti-money laundering checks must work across institutions and systems for a transfer to be usable.

Even if the remittance itself is fast, Lee said, high foreign-exchange costs or delayed local payouts can limit its benefit. Interoperability therefore has to address the entire payment chain, not only the transfer of a token between wallets.

Blockchain and stablecoins can simplify parts of the transaction process and reduce processing times, Lee said. They do not remove the need for procedures concerning the transfer of legal rights, responses to disruptions and anti-money laundering compliance. Those procedures remain important because cross-border payments must fit the legal and institutional requirements of the existing financial system.

Where does infrastructure competition settle?

“The most successful infrastructure is infrastructure that customers do not even realize exists,” Lee said. His measure was not whether a user prefers a particular blockchain or stablecoin, but whether the transaction completes reliably and the necessary information can be verified.

For payment providers, that standard favors infrastructure judged by completion and verifiability rather than affiliation with a single network. It also makes coordination among financial institutions and blockchain systems a condition of product utility, rather than an optional integration.

For the projected movement of about $30 trillion in assets by 2030, the relevant market-structure change will be whether these separate systems can operate as one payment infrastructure without exposing customers to added friction.

As the 2030 horizon approaches, institutions deploying stablecoins will need to show that their connections work across chains, assets, currencies and compliance requirements, not merely that a blockchain can settle a transfer.