Old coins are skyrocketing and won't stop? Maybe you should understand the underlying ISO 20022.

ISO 20022, the universal language of the financial world.

Written by: Deep Tide TechFlow

This round of the bull market has risen to a point that feels a bit uncomfortable. It has just been awarded the title of "Meme Bull Market," and not long after, the market is filled with a chorus of wails—yes, the old players who chased after memes have been trapped again. The most painful part is not being trapped by chasing memes, but rather having sold off long-held, stagnant old coins to chase memes, only to see those old coins start to surge.

XRP, XLM, HBAR, XVG… Recently, the names appearing on the exchange's gainers list every day are familiar yet strange to the old investors. In less than a month, XRP skyrocketed by 400%, surpassing SOL in market capitalization, and old group friends are all exclaiming: What year is this?

The "old junk" that has always been subjected to FUD suddenly surged, and while it seems like a bit of sector rotation, at its core, it may still be the market's renewed "value discovery" for these assets.

The positive impact of Trump's election on cryptocurrencies goes without saying, as evidenced by Bitcoin's crazy surge. Just one month after the election, Bitcoin successfully broke through the $100,000 mark. Trump's repeated friendly statements towards crypto have also led Wall Street to reassess the broader "payment attributes" of cryptocurrencies. For example, the recent surges in XRP, XLM, and others are mostly linked to the payment sector and share a commonality: they belong to the "ISO 20022" concept.

ISO 20022, the universal language of the financial world

Is ISO 20022 a new narrative that has suddenly emerged? Not at all; in fact, ISO 20022 has had its early form since 2004, long before the first Bitcoin was mined.

ISO 20022 (full name: Financial Services - Universal Financial Industry message scheme) is an international financial communication standard developed by ISO (International Organization for Standardization) Technical Committee TC68 (Financial Services). After years of development, it has become the unified standard for global financial messaging, covering multiple financial fields such as payments, securities, trade, cards, and foreign exchange.

From a technical perspective, ISO 20022 is:

A globally unified financial communication standard
A set of standardized data formats and rules
A framework for financial message transmission

For example, you might understand it better with this analogy.

Suppose you want to transfer $1,000 to a friend abroad; this money has to go through several layers of processing:

Your bank sends the payment instruction in its own format
SWIFT translates this instruction into its own format
The intermediary bank may process it using another format
Finally, the receiving bank has to translate it into a format it can understand

It's like playing a game of telephone; with each transfer, some information may be lost. Some important information (like payment purpose, invoice number) might even disappear during the conversion process. What seems like a simple cross-border payment actually goes through countless rounds of "translation"—because each financial institution speaks its own "dialect."

Thus, ISO 20022 can be understood as "global financial Mandarin." Just as Mandarin allows people from different regions to communicate with each other, ISO 20022 enables different financial institutions around the world to exchange information in the same way.

With ISO 20022, all financial institutions speak the same "language," and the payment information included in the communication is richer (expanded from the original 140 characters to 9,000 characters), the data structure is more standardized (like everyone using the same template), and processing is smarter (machines can read and process it directly). Previous cross-border transfers were like sending telegrams in Morse code; now it’s like sending a structured email that can include attachments and be automatically categorized.

Cryptocurrencies Actively Embracing ISO 20022

If a cryptocurrency meets the ISO 20022 standard, it will be assigned an official ISO code. Financial institutions can easily use cryptocurrencies for cross-border payments. Additionally, regulators may adopt a more lenient approach towards ISO 20022 tokens; tokens that meet ISO standards may see widespread use, effectively being "incorporated" into the global financial payment system, gaining legitimate payment purposes.

Note: A widely circulated diagram on Twitter, for reference only.

So, which ISO 20022 concept tokens are currently recognized by the market?

XRP (Ripple)

Official Certification Status: The only cryptocurrency project officially certified by ISO 20022.

Specific Implementations:

RippleNet fully integrates the ISO 20022 message standard
Provides a real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system
Supports end-to-end tracking of cross-border payments
Established partnerships with over 200 financial institutions

Major Collaborations:

Interoperability testing with SWIFT
Collaborating with multiple central banks on CBDC projects
Establishing direct payment channels with major banks

XLM (Stellar)

Official Certification Status: Non-official certified member, but technically supports the standard.

Specific Implementations:

Uses message formats compatible with ISO 20022
Provides cross-border payment and remittance services
Supports asset tokenization

Major Collaborations:

Strategic partnership with MoneyGram
Collaborating with over 350 banks in countries like Argentina
Partnering with Circle to issue USDC

ADA (Cardano)