XRP, Stellar, Algorand: Are These Cryptocurrencies Really Adopted by States?

Much ado about nothing. A thread published on X by a pro-XRP analyst has made waves in the crypto world this week. It listed eight cryptocurrencies used by governments for their digital infrastructures. Repeatedly shared, the narrative impresses. However, upon closer inspection, the reality behind each example rarely lives up to the promise of the title, and a true precedent for state adoption already exists. Key points of this article:

• A viral thread listed eight cryptocurrencies supposedly adopted by governments, but the reality of their state adoption is much more nuanced.
• El Salvador and Bhutan have genuinely adopted Bitcoin, showing that even with state adoption, the constraints of the traditional financial system remain.

8 Cryptos Around the World {#h-8-cryptos-facon-carte-du-monde}

Before dismantling the list, let’s lay it out as the analyst presented it. The thread associates each crypto with a specific public project, serving as evidence of a global movement:

Source: viral thread shared this week, cross-referenced with press coverage of each pilot and the official demographic data of each country.

Presented as a whole, the map is impressive. Eight continents, eight administrations, a veneer of global adoption at first glance. However, aggregating eight very different cases under one banner does not make them homogeneous. Starting with the size of the countries involved.

Two Pacific archipelagos with a combined population of less than 60,000 on one side. Heavyweights like Brazil or the United Kingdom on the other. It’s hard to speak of a common dynamic of large-scale adoption for such disparate realities. Let’s revisit these eight cases one by one.

Eight Cryptos, Eight More Modest Pilots Than Announced {#h-huit-cryptos-huit-pilotes-plus-modestes-qu-annonces}

XRP {#h-xrp}

XRP from Ripple is associated with the stablecoin pilot in Palau. This initiative mobilized 154 volunteer officials and three local businesses. So, it’s not exactly a state shifting its economy to XRP Ledger.

Algorand {#h-algorand}

Algorand showcases a pilot similar to the Marshall Islands, a nation of 42,000 inhabitants. This link actually dates back to the SOV legal tender project, launched on Algorand in 2018.

It never entered circulation and was officially repealed in August 2025. The program currently active in the Marshalls is a universal basic income scheme paid through the Lomalo wallet. It operates not on Algorand but on Stellar, with the digital obligation USDM1.

Stellar {#h-stellar}

Stellar was indeed engaged in the Ukrainian e-hryvnia project. However, the National Bank of Ukraine suspended this project in October 2025, due to lack of priority during wartime. The project remains at the research stage.

HBAR, IOTA, XDC, and ADA {#h-hbar-iota-xdc-and-ada}

Hedera is performing better with the Project Acacia of the Reserve Bank of Australia. Eight use cases out of twenty tested resulted in $4.4 million of wholesale CBDC issued. This amount is far from the ambitions expressed by the viral narrative.

IOTA (Kenyan customs), XDC (trade documents in Singapore), and Cardano (Brazilian IT modernization) have not produced any comparable public figures to date.

Quant {#h-quant}

Quant stands out as an exception on this list. Indeed, the company provides the technical infrastructure for the British project of tokenized deposits in sterling, led with HSBC and Barclays under the auspices of UK Finance. A real contract with real banks, certainly. However, it is an infrastructure contract signed with private institutions, not a decision by the Bank of England to adopt the QNT token.

So why is it so timid? The adoption of these infrastructures requires a political decision. A state that officially imposes or encourages the use of an asset, that includes it in its budget or reserves, that makes it a choice of sustainable monetary policy. A test conducted by a handful of willing officials, or a technical messaging compatibility chosen by a private company, does not tick any of these boxes. This is the confusion, whether intentional or not, that this viral thread perpetuates.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, has truly been adopted by a state {#h-bitcoin-has-truly-been-adopted-by-a-state}

There is indeed a real precedent for state use in crypto. It concerns Bitcoin, the major absentee from the list of eight. In 2021, El Salvador made it a fully legal currency, with an obligation for businesses to accept it.

This status was repealed in February 2025, under pressure from the International Monetary Fund, as part of a $1.4 billion agreement that also capped new public purchases of Bitcoin at zero. Nevertheless, the country continues to display about 7,700 BTC in reserves, worth approximately $474 million, making it the fifth largest known sovereign holder in the world.

Bhutan has taken the logic even further in blockchain. The Himalayan kingdom has been mining Bitcoin with its national hydropower since 2019, a deliberate choice for economic diversification via the sovereign fund Druk Holding & Investments. It has accumulated up to 13,000 BTC before starting, since 2025, a selling phase representing nearly 70% of its stock, to finance local infrastructure.

These two cases far exceed, in volume and political scope, anything shown by the list of eight cryptos aligned with governments. And yet, even this most advanced precedent has ultimately succumbed to the constraints of the traditional financial system. In this context, it is difficult to present a pilot with 154 people as a stronger proof of adoption than that of Bitcoin by El Salvador.

The deadline that really matters is called ISO 20022 {#h-the-deadline-that-really-matters-is-called-iso-20022}

Swift Imposes a New Standard {#h-swift-imposes-a-new-standard}

So why highlight these 8 cryptocurrencies instead of Bitcoin? Beyond the political choice, the common point among these eight cryptocurrencies is not a vote of confidence from states, but a technical compatibility with the ISO 20022 standard. This is the global financial messaging format. None of these cryptos are officially << certified >>: the standard applies to messages between institutions, not to the assets themselves.

The real deadline is real and already underway. Swift will end the coexistence period on November 22, 2025, and withdraw the MT103 and MT202 messages for cross-border payments. The next step will occur in November 2026. Unstructured postal addresses will be rejected, and the MT101 interbank relay will give way to the pain.001 version 9 format. It is this banking mechanism that drives Ripple, Quant, or Stellar to position themselves as gateways to this new common language.

The ISO 20022 standard is an open international standard related to financial information. It provides consistent, rich, and structured data usable for any type of financial transaction.

Source: Swift

Bitcoin, Structurally Excluded

You read that right. And, fundamentally, yes, it’s a bit absurd. Bitcoin is not just absent from the list by oversight: it is structurally excluded, because its protocol was never designed to carry the metadata of an ISO 20022 message (sender, beneficiary, payment reason, invoice reference, everything a bank needs to route a transfer). It is a minimalist peer-to-peer system, not a banking messaging layer. XRP, Stellar, Algorand, and the other five, on the contrary, were designed or adapted from the start to speak the same language as existing banking rails.

So when a government or central bank chooses one of these eight, it says nothing about its confidence in the asset as a currency, nor about its decentralization, nor about its robustness. It checks a technical box: << this network knows how to format a transaction like SWIFT already does >>.

And this is precisely where it becomes ironic. The only case where a state has actually adopted a crypto in the strong sense, by changing its monetary policy, by ceasing to control issuance, is Bitcoin in El Salvador. And it is precisely because Bitcoin refuses to play the game of banking compatibility that it is absent from the list. The eight highlighted cryptos are not those that have best convinced states of their value; they are those that have best conformed to the infrastructure that states and banks have never left. It’s almost the opposite of the narrative we are sold.

Europe Chooses a Completely Different Path with the Digital Euro

None of the eight projects mentioned concern the European Union. While XRP and others seek to attach themselves to existing banking rails, the European Central Bank is building its own sovereign infrastructure. 36 payment service providers have been selected from over 50 candidates for the large-scale pilot project of the digital euro, alongside 19 national central banks. The launch is scheduled for the second half of 2027, with circulation expected to begin in 2029.

Only one French player appears on this list of 36, the BPCE group. The difference in philosophy is striking. While Palau or the Marshall Islands pragmatically test private blockchain rails due to a lack of resources to build their own infrastructure, the Eurozone chooses to maintain control over its digital currency rather than relying on a third-party network.

Does a State Adopting Crypto Infrastructure Even Serve the Purpose?

Asking the question bluntly makes sense. The white paper published by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 does not envision a finance minister choosing Bitcoin to modernize their administration. It describes a peer-to-peer payment system based on cryptographic proof rather than trust in a third party. And, it is precisely to do away with banks and central authorities. The genesis block of Bitcoin even includes, as a message, a newspaper headline about a second bank bailout by the British state.

From this perspective, waving a contract with a Kenyan administration or an Australian central bank as proof of success is almost like turning the original philosophy against itself. What if the idea was never for states to choose a crypto, but rather that they no longer needed to do so?

Bitcoin Does Not Need the State

However, a nuance is necessary. Not all cases are equal. El Salvador, which makes Bitcoin legal tender, does not "choose" a provider. It renounces control over the issuance of its own currency in favor of a network that no state governs. The eight cases on the viral list work in the opposite direction. An administration entrusts a technical brick to a private company that largely controls its network, whether it is the Algorand Foundation, Ripple Labs, or Quant Network. The state changes providers, not the logic of trust. With its flaws, Salvadoran Bitcoin remains the only example this week that has truly tested Satoshi Nakamoto's initial proposal. A currency that no one controls, not even the state that adopts it.

The real story this week is therefore not about states that "adopt" XRP, Stellar, or Algorand blockchains. It is about a global financial industry forced to migrate to a new messaging standard. One where smaller economies choose private shortcuts while larger monetary zones, led by Europe, prefer to build their own digital sovereignty. And, when a state truly chooses to adopt a crypto, like El Salvador or Bhutan with Bitcoin, history shows that even this conscious choice ends up grappling with the realities of the global financial system. The world is a stage.