Ripple’s UAE Tokenization Project Moves Over AED 1 Billion in Diamonds On-Chain
Ripple just orchestrated a billion-dirham diamond heist—the legal kind.
The blockchain giant spearheaded a United Arab Emirates initiative that tokenized a mountain of precious stones. We're talking about shifting assets worth more than AED 1 billion onto a distributed ledger. This isn't a speculative crypto play; it's real-world value getting a digital passport.
From Vault to Virtual
The project bypasses traditional asset registries and paper trails. Each diamond gets a unique, immutable identity on-chain—cutting out layers of manual verification and potential fraud. Think of it as a permanent, transparent certificate of authenticity that anyone can verify but no one can forge.
Why It Cuts Deep
This move slashes through the opaqueness of high-value commodity trading. It streamlines audits, simplifies ownership transfers, and injects liquidity into a historically illiquid market. Suddenly, fractions of a high-value stone can be traded as easily as a meme coin—though with slightly more intrinsic sparkle.
It's a masterclass in moving beyond currency and into the infrastructure of value itself. While some financiers are still debating blockchain's merits over cigars, Ripple is quietly rebuilding the plumbing of global trade. The closing thought? A billion here, a billion there—pretty soon you're talking about real money, even by traditional finance standards.
Billiton Diamond taps XRPL to tokenize diamond sales
Billiton Diamond, known in diamond markets for its Vickrey auction model, has now moved to issuing tokenized models for the polished stones. The company’s current auction system has commendable price discovery and supply efficiency, but according to its executives, blockchain could add transparency to its post-polishing trade.
The tokenization drive links to the collaboration between Ripple and Ctrl Alt formed in July 2025, which followed the latter firm’s announcement of its participation in Dubai’s land asset digitization the previous month. Ripple provided its blockchain to secure digital representations of real-world assets for Ctrl Alt, which has now hit a whopping $348 million valuation.
As reported by Cryptopolitan, the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre authority established connections among commodity traders, technology providers, and regulatory bodies through the Dubai Land Department Initiative, launched in June last year.
According to Robert Farquhar, Ctrl Alt’s Chief Executive Officer for the Middle East and North Africa, the company has “proven tokenization expertise and technology” to help Billiton build a clear, secure, and compliant on-chain diamond ownership ecosystem.
Through the infrastructure and partnerships we have developed, including recently with VARA, we are creating the frameworks for industry leaders such as Billiton Diamond and Ctrl Alt to apply digital innovation to the physical diamond trade and to advance the wider tokenization of high-value commodities in a manner that is secure, scalable, and trusted.
Ahmed Bin Sulayem, Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of DMCC
The forthcoming platform will include real-time inventory tracking tied to blockchain entries, with certification records accompanying each tokenized stone on XRPL. Per the partners, this will help traders verify what they are buying before making settlements, while also reducing documentation friction.
Tokenized assets on XRPL shot up 2,000% in 2025
Ripple had a solid year after the US Securities and Exchange Commission decided to dismiss its case against the stablecoin issuer. A slump in regulatory scrutiny in the market helped boost tokenized assets on XRPL from $24.7 million in January to about $567.9 million by December 2025, according to data from market aggregator RWA.xyz.
As Billiton Diamond and Ctrl Alt MOVE $280 million in diamond inventory onto the XRPL, our custody technology provides the rigorous security required to manage these assets at scale, proving that high-value physical assets can be moved on-chain with absolute confidence. Alongside Billiton Diamond and Ctrl Alt, we are proud to set a new precedent for commodities trading in the digital age.
Ripple’s Managing Director for the Middle East and Africa, Reece Merrick.
At the time of this reporting, XRPL’s represented asset value was approaching $1.5 billion, while tokenized real-world assets had reached $220 million. Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin reached about $1.3 billion, and the blockchain hosts around $500 million in tokenized assets, according to figures cited by the company.
If you're reading this, you’re already ahead. Stay there with our newsletter.
