In recent years, the international financial messaging standard ISO 20022 announced by SWIFT has been drawing attention. Cryptocurrencies that comply with this standard are actually limited, and even in the current market cycle they’re showing interesting performance.

Bitcoin and Ethereum aren’t compatible with ISO 20022. The reason is simple: these two were created in 2009 and 2015, respectively—before the standard was announced. No one can retroactively change that. Meanwhile, XRP from Ripple, although a project created in 2012, was deliberately moved toward ISO 20022 compliance under corporate leadership. That’s a key difference.

There are currently 8 major cryptocurrencies that comply with ISO 20022: XRP, ADA, XLM, HBAR, ALGO, IOTA, QNT, and XDC. In particular, there’s also the view that aligning with this standard may have influenced recent market performance.

Let’s start with XRP. Last October, it was below $0.6, and then it surged sharply in the subsequent market. Right now, it has settled at $1.38. Even so, it hasn’t reached the bubble peak of $3.8 in January 2018—back then, it was a frenzy with +1400% in just one month.

As for ADA, by market capitalization it’s the second-largest among ISO 20022-compliant cryptocurrencies. It was below $0.4 last October, then rose to above $1.2, but it has since pulled back to $0.25. It’s still far from the peak of $3.1 in 2021. It hasn’t seen a surge as explosive as XRP.

XLM is a cryptocurrency that was created as a Ripple spin-off, and after posting a high above $0.9 in 2021, it was in a lot of trouble afterward. It’s now at $0.16. HBAR is also in a correction phase, currently at $0.09.

What’s particularly interesting are ALGO and IOTA. These two have been struggling considerably. ALGO has fallen 85% from its all-time high, and IOTA has dropped by more than 90%. Currently, ALGO is down to $0.11 and IOTA is down to $0.05. They’re still far from their peaks in 2021, and there is theoretically room for a recovery—but in the long run, it looks like the downtrend is continuing.

QNT and XDC have a slightly different pattern. QNT is currently $68.59, down 72% from its all-time high. XDC is down about 30%, staying around $0.03. These two strongly tend to track the overall market cycle.

It’s still unknown whether adapting to ISO 20022 truly affects the cryptocurrency market. However, it’s certain that cryptocurrencies compliant with this standard have a theoretical advantage in terms of connecting with the existing financial system. It may be worth keeping an eye on how this develops going forward.