The story about ISO 20022, a financial messaging standard, is actually quietly playing an important role in the cryptocurrency market. There aren’t many cryptocurrencies that comply with this standard SWIFT announced a few years ago, and among them, there are several especially notable coins.

Even Bitcoin and Ethereum—top 2 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization—do not support this standard. They were created in 2009 and 2015, respectively, so they existed before the standard was introduced. On the other hand, XRP is the leading major cryptocurrency that complies with ISO 20022. This project created by Ripple in 2012 is essentially a decentralized blockchain led by Ripple, and it was able to intentionally incorporate support for the standard.

Including XRP, there are currently more than six types of crypto assets known to support ISO 20022: XLM, ADA, HBAR, ALGO, IOTA, and tokens like QNT and XDC. Stellar’s XLM was created as a decentralized spin-off of Ripple. And ADA from Cardano, HBAR from Hedera, ALGO from Algorand, QNT from Quant, as well as IOTA and XDC—these are the ones with support for the standard.

In essence, ISO 20022 is a standard created by SWIFT to standardize communication between financial institutions. It enables automatic communication between the systems of different financial institutions, and the fact that the world’s most important interbank settlement system—which has been in operation for over 50 years—adopts it is highly significant. The support for this standard, which began transitioning in 2022 and was expected to be completed by 2025, may actually be affecting performance in the cryptocurrency market.

Look at XRP’s movement. In October 2024, it was below $0.6, but then it surged dramatically afterward—at one point, it briefly exceeded $3.2. The current price is $1.39, and the all-time high of $3.8 from January 2018 is coming back into view. Back then, it was a sensational speculative bubble, but this time there’s a substantial underlying reason: support for the standard.

ADA is showing a similar pattern. It rose from below $0.4 in October 2024 to above $1.2, but it’s now at $0.26. It still has a way to go before reaching its all-time high of $3.1 in 2021. XLM is at $0.16, HBAR is at $0.09, ALGO is at $0.13, IOTA is at $0.06, QNT is at $70.95, and XDC is at $0.03—but all of these have the common backdrop of ISO 20022 compliance.

ALGO and IOTA have shown hints of recovery little by little after severe drops of -85% and -90%, respectively, from their all-time highs. Theoretically, they should have considerable potential, but the issue is that, in the long term, they look like projects whose downward trend continues. QNT is down -72% from its all-time high, and XDC is down -30%; while market trends differ, they still move in line with the overall direction of the broader crypto market.

How important will this factor of ISO 20022 compliance be for future market developments? I think it’s something worth keeping a close eye on.