Goldman Sachs' Stablecoin Plan Triggers Déjà Vu in Former Ripple Exec

Emi Yoshikawa, former vice president of strategic initiatives at Ripple, expressed a sense of déjà vu upon learning about the plans by Goldman Sachs and Japan's MUFG Bank to launch their own U.S. dollar stablecoin. Yoshikawa spent eight years at Ripple from 2016 to 2024, during which she developed XRP's institutional presence in Asia.

The reaction is rooted in her understanding of the traditional finance (TradFi) approach, where major banks explore third-party blockchain solutions but ultimately choose to create isolated structures that allow them to control liquidity, compliance, and transaction fees instead of integrating with networks such as the XRP Ledger.

Meanwhile, MUFG Bank, the only Asian participant in the dollar project, is involved in a domestic initiative to launch settlements using a yen-denominated stablecoin based on Progmat by March 2027. This could potentially allow the bank to conduct international yen-to-dollar conversions entirely within a controlled banking blockchain environment.

The overlap between the banking consortium's objectives and those of regulated crypto-native instruments such as Ripple's RLUSD may lead to market segmentation. The banking token is aimed at internal settlements between consortium members and large corporations that require direct interbank auditing, whereas tokens like RLUSD and USDC could maintain their positions in the open fintech sector, retail payments, and DeFi ecosystems.