Brad Garlinghouse — CEO of San Francisco-based real-time gross settlement system, currency exchange, and remittance network Ripple — believes Bitcoin is “not going to be the panacea that people once thought it would be,” and that his company’s in-house cryptocurrency, XRP, is superior. At the same time, however, he believes the cryptocurrency space will see many winners once the dust finally settles.
‘There will be many winners’
In an interview with CNBC earlier this week, Garlinghouse shared his opinions on Bitcoin and its supposed inability to solve a wide range of problems. Explained Ripple’s CEO at the Money 20/20 fintech conference in Amsterdam:
I think [Bitcoin’s] not going to be the panacea that people once thought it would be, where it would solve all of these different kind of problems… Instead, you’re seeing specializations of different kind of ledgers, different kinds of blockchains.
In particular, Garlinghouse takes issue with Bitcoin’s slow transaction speed, compared to XRP’s, which are “a thousand times faster.” From an objective standpoint, Ripple transactions average roughly four seconds, while transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain are currently around 40 minutes.
Still, Ripple’s CEO doesn’t think that only one cryptocurrency will come out on top. In fact, he recognizes that different cryptocurrencies serve different purposes. Garlinghouse stated:
Well, I don’t really think about it as one versus the other. I mean, it’s actually unfortunate, I think, that there’s some people in this, the crypto space, the blockchain space — for them, it’s almost a holy war of one versus the other. I don’t look at that at all.
I think that what we’re seeing is the overall growth of this space and there will be many winners.
‘XRP is not a security’
Ripple is also currently defending itself against Ryan Coffey’s claims that the company violated U.S. securities law — something which Garlinghouse thinks is an “outrageous” claim from “somebody who held XRP for, I think, two weeks.” Ripple’s CEO told CNBC:
Whether or not XRP is a security is not going to be dictated by one lawsuit… I think it’s very clear that XRP is not a security, it does exist independently of Ripple the company. If Ripple the company is shut down tomorrow the XRP ecosystem would continue to exist. It’s an independent, open-sourced technology.
Garlinghouse continued:
From an ownership point of view, owning XRP doesn’t give you any ownership of Ripple equity. And also, as we just talked about, XRP has a lot of utility, so to me it’s quite different than what a security you know looks like and I think ultimately we’ll find that conclusion.
What do you think about Garlinghouse’s opinions? Do you think the cryptocurrency space will see many winners? Do you think XRP is a security? Let us know in the comments below!
Images courtesy of Shutterstock.
[Full disclosure: The author of this article holds Ripple (XRP).]