Jim Rickards has spent decades at the intersection of intelligence, finance and geopolitical strategy. He was involved in the construction of the PetroDollar system in the 1970s.
Which makes what he said this week particularly interesting.
Discussing which currencies Iran might be using to collect its reported Bitcoin toll from oil tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz, Rickards paused before answering. “Could be Bitcoin. Could be Tether. Could be, I mean, you know, Ripple.”
He listed Ripple alongside Bitcoin and Tether as a plausible medium for sovereign energy settlement.
The Context Matters
Rickards was discussing breaking news from the Financial Times reporting that Iran had begun charging vessels a toll to transit the Strait of Hormuz, with payment demanded in cryptocurrency. The exact currency was not specified in the original report. Rickards was working through the logical candidates in real time.
His analysis went further than just naming currencies. He pointed out that regardless of which cryptocurrency Iran uses, it is still pricing the toll in dollars. One dollar per barrel of oil is a dollar-denominated transaction settled in crypto, not an escape from the dollar system.
“You can hit on the dollar but you can’t get away from it,” he said. “Cryptocurrencies have a dollar equivalent. So you’re always back to the dollar no matter how hard people try to get away from it.”
He also raised a pointed question about Tether specifically. The largest stablecoin by market cap counts Howard Lutnik, the US Secretary of Commerce, as a significant investor. If Iran is settling oil tolls in Tether, it is arguably routing payments through an instrument with direct ties to the US government it is trying to circumvent.
“Iran is going to use Tether? They’re going to charge a toll on the oil in Tether?” he said, letting the irony speak for itself.
Why Ripple Matters in This Conversation
According to supporters, Ripple’s inclusion in Rickards’ list was not random. $XRP and the $XRP Ledger are specifically designed for fast, low-cost cross-border settlement between institutional counterparties. Transactions settle in three to five seconds. The network has over 300 financial institutions using its payment infrastructure.
Whether Iran is actually using Ripple is unknown. Rickards was speculating, not confirming. But the fact that a former CIA contractor and one of the architects of the PetroDollar system reached for Ripple as a natural answer to the question of what replaces dollar-denominated oil settlement is a data point worth noting.
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