Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple‘s CEO, yesterday held a Ask Me Anything session with the company’s Senior VP of Marketing, Monica Long, during which he described XRP as follows:
“I think it is very clear XRP is not a security. There is a whole bunch of base layer reasons for that. One of the most important I think is, if Ripple the company shuts down, XRP trades on over a hundred exchanges around the world and XRP will continue to trade. Ripple is one important participant in the XRP ecosystem, but there are a whole bunch of participants”.
Monica Long’s question was about the very nature of XRP as security or not, and in order to explain that XRP cannot be considered as such, Garlinghouse said that the company Ripple does not control XRP completely, meaning that the crypto could exist even without it.
In addition, he admitted his error related to the prediction that 2018 would be the year in which even institutional investors would make their entry into the market of cryptocurrencies and postponed it to 2019.
However, according to Garlinghouse, this phenomenon has already occurred, but to a very limited extent, mainly due to the fact that this industry is not yet mature enough.
Regarding the SEC’s decision on Bitcoin ETFs, Ripple’s CEO acknowledged that the US body has a rather difficult job to do on this issue.
The US regulator stated that their main concerns are the risks associated with manipulating a possible Bitcoin-backed ETF and Garlinghouse added that 2018 did not help the SEC make a decision because of the concentration of BTC mining.
According to Garlinghouse, such centralised power would increase the risks of manipulation.
Ripple’s CEO also mentioned the importance of transparency in this sector, because, especially for the entry of institutional investors, higher standards and less shady subjects are needed.
Finally, he reiterated his prediction that in 2019, even traditional banks will begin to offer cryptocurrency-related services.
