John Cho, CEO of stablecoin issuer Ratio, is making the case...
The correspondent banking bottleneck
Today, cross-border trade in Asia depends on a network of correspondent banks, pre-funded Nostro and Vostro accounts, and handoffs across time zones. The result: transactions that can take days to settle. Cho points to this system as outdated, with fees and delays that eat into margins for businesses moving money between, say, Thai baht and Indonesian rupiah.
Stablecoins have already shown they can move value almost instantly. But most are pegged to the U.S. dollar, meaning a Thai exporter paid in a dollar stablecoin must still convert to baht to pay local staff. That second conversion — from stablecoin to local currency — recreates the very friction the technology was supposed to eliminate.
Local-currency stablecoins as a complement
Cho's proposal is straightforward: issue stablecoins pegged to Asian currencies — the yen, the won, the ringgit — and let them trade alongside dollar stablecoins. A business in Singapore could pay a supplier in Jakarta using a rupiah stablecoin, bypassing the dollar leg entirely. The idea is to avoid what Cho calls double FX conversions.
Ratio itself is building the infrastructure for such a system. Cho didn't disclose specific partnerships or launch dates, but he argues that a multi-currency stablecoin network could plug into existing payment rails more easily than a complete overhaul of correspondent banking.
The biggest question is whether regulators across Asia will bless multiple private stablecoins, each tied to a different national currency. Central banks in the region have been cautious about digital currencies, and some are developing their own. Cho's vision depends on them seeing private stablecoins as a complement, not a competitor.
