BIS Paper 1374 and the XRP Ledger: What the Study Actually Says

The Bank for International Settlements, the institution central banks use as their own bank, has published a working paper that uses the XRP Ledger. According to the video, the letters “XRP” appear 101 times in its 56 pages, compared with 14 mentions of Ethereum, three of Bitcoin and none of Solana.

That is a real document, posted on the BIS’s own website. The video goes further and reads it as the BIS picking XRP for the future of global banking. This article separates what the paper tests from what the video infers, so holders know what they are actually looking at.

What is the Bank for International Settlements?

The BIS is often called the central bank of central banks. It opened in Basel, Switzerland, in 1930 and, per the video, has 62 central banks as members, including the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan.

It does not serve the public. It provides banking services to central banks and publishes research that shapes how they think about money and payments. That is why a mention of the XRP Ledger in a BIS publication gets attention.

What does paper 1374 propose?

The paper proposes using a public blockchain to prove that official statistics have not been quietly edited after publication. On September 2, 2026, the BIS published working paper number 1374, titled “Verifiable Official Statistics” and described as a blockchain-based approach. The video says it was written by four BIS staff members.

The problem it targets is simple. When a body such as the BIS, the IMF, the World Bank or a central bank publishes a data set (GDP, inflation, banking figures), there is no math-based way for a reader to prove the file wasn’t changed after it went online. The current standard for sharing these statistics, called SDMX, is a data format and an agreement between institutions. It is not a way to verify that a file is genuine.

Paper 1374’s fix works in three steps:

1. Turn each data set into a digital fingerprint, known as a hash. Change one number in the file and the fingerprint changes.
2. Stamp that fingerprint onto the XRP Ledger as a small, timestamped receipt.
3. Let anyone compare a file they have downloaded against the receipt on the ledger.

The video describes the result as a tamper-proof receipt published as an open-source project. One XRP commentator featured in the video called it a “public lie detector” for official economic data.

How did the XRP Ledger compare with Ethereum?

According to the figures the video cites from the paper’s own comparison table, the XRP Ledger was faster and much cheaper for this job.

Measure	XRP Ledger	Ethereum (main layer)
Cost per stamp	About $0.00003	About $5
Time to stamp	3 to 5 seconds	Not given in the video
Time to verify	1 to 2 seconds	Minutes to hours

For a statistics office stamping many data sets, the cost gap matters. The figures come from the paper as reported in the video, so readers who want the full methodology should check the paper itself.

Is the BIS committed to the XRP Ledger?

No, not on the evidence in the video. In a June presentation to the SDMX community, a BIS statistician described the system’s automated verification, which he said could be plugged into AI agents and model context protocols “within a second.” He gave the XRP Ledger’s publication time as about 3 to 5 seconds and called it “very green.”

He also said, in the same breath: “This could be any ledger. We’re blockchain agnostic.”

The video reads that as the BIS shopping around and choosing the XRP Ledger as the best fit on speed, cost and track record. That is a fair description of what happened in this prototype. It is not the same as the BIS adopting XRP, and the statistician’s own words leave the door open to other ledgers.

Where do Ripple and Interledger come in?

The video connects the paper to Ripple through Interledger, a protocol for linking different payment networks so value can move between them the way email moves between servers. According to the video, Stefan Thomas, then Ripple’s chief technology officer, gave Interledger to the World Wide Web Consortium years ago, and the BIS team’s work builds on it.

The video also plays clips of Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse on a panel it places at a BIS event in 2023. In them, Garlinghouse says:

• that “if there’s real utility and there’s real value being delivered to a real customer, there will be value in the token”
• that the Interledger Protocol can help create “a network of networks” so value can be transferred instantly between networks
• that “the combination of ILP with XRP” is “kind of the killer formula”

These are Garlinghouse’s views about Ripple’s technology. The video treats paper 1374 as proof he was right. The paper shows the BIS used the XRP Ledger for data receipts. It does not show the BIS endorsing XRP as a settlement asset.

What is Project Agora, and is Ripple in it?

Project Agora is a separate BIS initiative, and according to the video Ripple’s link to it runs through partner banks rather than direct membership. Launched in 2024, it brought together the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of France, the Bank of Korea, the Bank of Mexico and the Swiss National Bank, along with more than 40 large private financial firms, including JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank and Visa.

The video says several private participants, among them Standard Chartered, BBVA, BNY Mellon, MUFG, Mizuho and SMBC, are documented Ripple partners. It also says SBI Holdings publicly confirmed its participation in September 2024.

The video plays a clip of Hyun Song Shin of the BIS describing the idea behind a “unified ledger”: central bank money and commercial bank deposits on the same platform, so transactions can settle “instantaneously at the same time.”

Being a Ripple partner and an Agora participant is not the same as using XRP inside Agora. The video presents the overlap as Ripple standing “right in the middle” of the project. That is the video’s interpretation, not something any of these institutions announced.

What this means for XRP holders

The video points out that XRP has traded below $1.50 for most of the past year while this work went on. Its argument is that institutional groundwork is being laid out of sight. Bullrunners can’t confirm what any institution plans to do next, and nothing in paper 1374 commits the BIS to XRP.

What the paper does show is concrete: a BIS research team tested the XRP Ledger for a real public-sector problem and published numbers that favored it over Ethereum’s main layer on cost and verification speed.

What to watch next

• Read the paper. It is posted on bis.org. Check the comparison table and the authors’ conclusions for yourself.
• Watch for a next step. A working paper and a prototype are early. Look for statistics offices or central banks actually anchoring published data this way.
• Check which ledger they use. The design is blockchain agnostic. If it is adopted, see whether the XRP Ledger stays the anchor.
• Keep data receipts and payments separate. A ledger used to stamp statistics is not a ledger used to settle money. Read each headline for which one it describes.