ISO 20022 Compliant Coins: Where the List Came From, Checked

The widely shared list of “ISO 20022 compliant” cryptocurrencies did not come from Swift or the standards body. According to the video, it traces to a December 22, 2021 InvestorPlace article, and three of its eight coins rested on one tweet. The ISO 20022 website itself says no cryptocurrency is compliant on its own.

That matters if part of your portfolio was bought because a coin carried that label. The banking switch to ISO 20022 was real. The list was a separate thing. The video argues that the better question is which of these networks a named bank has actually used.

What did Swift actually switch to?

Swift moved cross-border payment messages to the ISO 20022 standard on November 22, 2025. In a clip shown in the video, a Swift representative explains what happened on that date. The “coexistence period” ended, all cross-border payment instructions had to be exchanged in ISO 20022 format, and the older FIN payment messages were no longer allowed.

ISO 20022 has existed since 2004. In plain terms, it is a shared language for payment messages, so a bank in Tokyo and a bank in Manchester fill in the same boxes. An HSBC clip in the video describes it as “a standard supporting financial messaging” built on XML, a common data format. In a 2018 clip, Swift’s head of market infrastructures called it the common language institutions need to talk to each other.

The video stresses one point above all: ISO 20022 describes the information that travels with a payment. The money itself moves on other systems. In another clip, Swift’s board chair, speaking two months before the switch, said the full volume of traffic would be migrated. The video presents this as the result of years of planning by banks, not a reaction to any coin list.

Where did the ISO 20022 coin list come from?

The list came from an InvestorPlace news writer. On December 22, 2021, the site published five “compliant” cryptocurrencies to watch: XRP, Stellar (XLM), XDC, IOTA and Algorand. The article then added three coins it called “rumored to be compliant”: Hedera, Quant and Cardano. Per the video, the only support for that rumor was a link to one tweet.

The video says the list was circulating on crypto social media within two days. It also says the same article was republished on Nasdaq, and a new list of seven “compliant” coins followed in 2023. Wallet maker Tangem, according to the video, updated its ISO-compliant coins page in June with the same eight names. The video notes that Tangem’s small print admits nobody certifies coins as compliant, while the label still appears in the headline.

What does “compliant” mean in the original article?

According to the video, the article never defines “compliant.” It says the five coins meet the standard’s compliance requirements without stating what those requirements are or who checked them.

The only reason the article gives is membership. It says Ripple and Stellar are members of the ISO 20022 standards body. Ripple did join in 2020. For Stellar, the article says it is involved through IBM, which it says uses Stellar to underlie its stablecoin-issuing operation. In other words, the case for Stellar rested on a different company.

The video adds a check readers can do themselves. It says the member list on the ISO 20022 website includes Ripple, but neither Stellar nor IBM.

What does the ISO 20022 website say about crypto?

The official ISO 20022 FAQ answers the question directly. It says “cryptocurrencies are not inherently ISO 20022 compliant.” Further up the page, it says “there is no official certification authority for ISO 20022.” Searching “ISO 20022 FAQ” brings up the page.

The video says the next answer on the page is rarely quoted. According to the video, it explains that a blockchain itself isn’t compliant, but payment firms and exchanges may build ISO 20022 into how they deal with banks. So a coin can’t be compliant on its own, but the plumbing around it can connect to banks.

Per the video, Ripple’s David Schwartz made a similar point in 2023: ISO 20022 is a messaging standard for payments, and XRP is a cryptocurrency.

Who decides which money moves on Swift?

Banks do, according to Swift’s own leadership. The video shows a clip from the Sibos 2025 conference in Frankfurt, which drew more than 12,000 people. In it, Swift’s chief says Swift will focus on the infrastructure layer. The types of tokens exchanged on its ledger, “the money layer,” are “the territory of commercial and central banks.”

The video’s conclusion is that no list can choose for those banks.

A Standard Chartered speaker on a Swift panel added that ISO 20022, as a common language, opens up settlement over “other rails” beyond the classical payment systems. The video reads that as banks keeping alternative rails on the table. It is not a commitment to any specific coin.

Which listed coins have real bank activity?

Several of the eight coins now have named institutional activity, according to the video. These are the “receipts” it contrasts with the list’s green ticks.

Coin	Status on 2021 list	Activity cited in the video
Stellar (XLM)	Listed as compliant	On September 9, 2026, U.S. Bank said it had run a live pilot of its own dollar stablecoin, USBDC, on Stellar. It was a cross-border payment between its North American and European businesses, testing issuing, redeeming and freezing
Quant (QNT)	“Rumored”	On September 24, 2026, seven British banks (Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, Monzo, Nationwide, NatWest and Santander) made their first live customer transactions with tokenized pounds, on a shared platform that coverage says Quant built
Hedera (HBAR)	“Rumored”	Hedera’s team says a private network built on Hedera technology was one of three platforms approved to hold digital money in the Reserve Bank of Australia’s Project Acacia trials
XDC	Listed as compliant	In June 2022, messaging platform Impel launched on XDC. It sends ISO messages between firms and records proofs on the chain, with XDC as optional settlement collateral
Algorand (ALGO)	Listed as compliant	Partnered last November with a payments firm, so builders can get euro and dollar bank accounts linked to the chain
XRP	Listed as compliant	The video says Ripple sits on the standards body and that the receipt to watch is which banks use Ripple’s systems
IOTA, Cardano	Listed / “rumored”	No specific bank activity cited; the video says they get the same check

The video describes the XDC and Algorand items as pipes that are built but still waiting for a large bank to use them. On Quant, Bullrunners would add one point of its own: a bank using a platform is not the same as demand for the token.

The host’s own view is that more banks may turn up on these rails, possibly later than holders hope, and that no list will say which ones. That is the host’s opinion, not a forecast from Bullrunners.

The receipt check: a framework for list coins

The video offers a simple test to replace the “compliant” label. For each coin, ask who is actually using it, with a date and a name you can look up.

1. Open the app or wallet where your coins sit and find any coins you hold because of an ISO 20022 list.
2. Check when you first bought each one. If it was the winter of 2021 into 2022, the video suggests the list may have driven the purchase. It notes this was the same period UST was being sold as a digital dollar. The video says UST was at 35 cents on May 9, 2022. In fact, UST fell to about 66 cents that day and dropped below 35 cents on May 11.
3. For each coin, look for a receipt: a named bank or central bank, a date, and an announcement you can verify.
4. Keep in mind that the standard’s own FAQ says no certification authority exists, so a “compliant” label with no named certifier has nothing official behind it.

The video then poses three decisions for anyone holding these coins:

• Custody: which of these coins sit on an exchange where someone else holds the keys?
• Activity: are the coins sitting idle while you wait for the next announcement?
• Triggers: what development, such as a bank announcement or the lack of one, would change your view of each coin? The video’s point is that thinking this through in advance avoids reacting to the next viral list.

What to watch next

The next public receipt the video flags is Meridian 2026, Stellar’s conference in Lisbon on October 28 and 29. Jamie Walker, U.S. Bank’s Head of Digital Assets and Money Movement, is on the speaker list. Any details on what follows the stablecoin pilot may come out there.

Beyond that, the video’s advice is to watch for named bank announcements on each network rather than new lists. A dated announcement from a bank you can look up tells you more than any label.