Washington DC’s annual Fintech Week was recently concluded and it was quite an important one from the perspective of the crypto industry. One of the most influential personalities from the industry, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, attended the event and spoke about various aspects of the crypto space.
Garlinghouse was particular expressive about his views on the Libra Project, the infamous crypto program led by Facebook, and he didn’t munch his words on criticizing Libra on multiple fronts. When asked what’s his impression on the Libra Project, he said
Look, Libra, specifically the white paper, I think there’s a lot of things still to be figured out, you know. When the white paper first came out, it was very much kind of positioned more as it was gonna be a new fiat currency. They backtracked on that, you know. Today in the testimony, they talked about it being in a way to extend America’s financial leadership, the last time I checked Libra’s based in Switzerland, that’s a little confusing.
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He further added that the stage of publishing a white paper is quite an early one, and that’s when people are still figuring out about the new intended ‘global currency.’ Ripple chief, however, stated that the company wants the crypto ecosystem to thrive and is making all efforts towards achieving this goal.
Similarly, Garlinghouse also spoke about his vision regarding Ripple, and how he thinks the project differentiates itself from the competition. He stated that in the simplest words, Ripple is an enterprise software company that caters to a bank and other financial institutions, which actually was quite well put together. Ripple has partnered with over 200+ financial companies across the globe, which include some of the biggest names in the banking industry. When asked why he claims that XRP is not a cryptocurrency, Garlinghouse said that he doesn’t consider Bitcoin as crypto either, which quite a strange analogy to make.
He stated that in today’s day and age, people could use crypto in most of the established brand outlets across the globe, which makes it as good as traditional currency. He, however, said that XRP is 1000 times faster than BTC in processing transactions and is also 1000 times cheaper. This, according to Garlinghouse, makes Ripple the ultimate digital coin for daily usage.
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Ripple CEO also spoke about his views on stablecoins, and his response was pleasantly surprising. At a time when several members from the industry have stated that stablecoins are not real crypto, Garlinghouse said that they are here to stay and he is quite positive about them. He said,
I think it’s interesting to see what’s happening to stablecoins. I think in some ways, they’ve exceeded where I thought they were gonna be. I think stablecoins are here to stay. I think there’s going to be more and more of them and you know I’m intrigued by those that are launching how they perform better than you would. I thought originally when the first stablecoin was to be announced, this might be just a passing fancy and I think I was wrong about that.
