Ripple’s CEO Believes Facebook’s Libra is a Net Positive for Crypto
Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of Ripple Inc, is bullish on cryptocurrency adoption stemming from the potential to attract billions through Facebook’s latest cryptocurrency launch. In an exclusive interview with Fortune, Garlinghouse declared that more banks have come forward to enquire about using xCurrent and he believes the increased interest is a result of a massive technology company like Facebook accepting the merits and potential of digital currency, June 20, 2019.
Facebook an Adoption Catalyst
Ever since Project Libra’s announcement, it has been the buzz of the entire community and is subject to intense debate as to whether it would be a beneficial development or a pointless one. Many people believe it will help drive adoption to more decentralized cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, after Libra draws in the masses to its platform and improves accessibility to Bitcoin.
Brad Garlinghouse has revealed that many banks have come forward with renewed interest for xCurrent after seeing a tech behemoth like Facebook entering the space. The emergence of Facebook to the payments business is a signal of changing transactions standards. Garlinghouse believes that the introduction of Libra as a regulated payment processor will require banks to move away from the near-obsolete SWIFT transactions mechanism.
A Ripple in Time
Ripple believes that they are well placed to absorb the institutional transaction market with added functionality from the Interledger Protocol (ILP). Ripple’s recent 10 percent stake purchase in MoneyGram sent the stock of the company up 168 percent, but it did not have much of an effect of the XRP token. Garlinghouse believes Ripple’s low mobility in value movement is due to “Bullsh*t and noise” in the crypto space. Ripple’s multiple partnerships with the likes of SBI and several other major banks displays their intent to utilize distributed ledger and digital currencies to improve the institutional transaction market.
Other than Ripple’s own brand issues in the crypto community, the buzz around blockchain has created a marketing frenzy and a number of scams and fraudulent activities to the extent of it becoming the most defining feature of cryptocurrency. The legitimacy and genuine use cases have been overlooked by the general public because of the scams that occur in the space.
