Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of cross-border payment giant Ripple, has weighed in on JP Morgan’s USD-pegged stablecoin, again.
While Brad Garlinghouse had some words of praise for JPM Coin, he generally dismisses the idea it has the potential to be adopted by banks.
During a fireside chat at the Chamber of Digital Commerce’s D.C. Blockchain Summit in Washington, Garlinghouse said he thinks it’s “great” to have major financial players like JPMorgan “leaning in.” But, he quickly added:
“That’s the only nice thing I’m going to say about this.”
While being interviewed by Nasdaq reporter Jill Malandrino on stage at this event, the Ripple CEO was asked what he thinks about JPM Coin, which was announced by JPMorgan Chase on February 14th. This is what the Ripple CEO said about JPM Coin back then:
“This guy from Morgan Stanley was interviewing me, I said ‘So, is Morgan Stanley going to use the JPM Coin?’ And he said ‘probably not.’ So, well is Citi going to use the JPM Coin? So, does that mean we’re going to have all these different coins? Are we back to where we are with lack of interoperability? I don’t get it.”
He also tweeted of how JPMorgan project is missing a point there:
As predicted, banks are changing their tune on crypto. But this JPM project misses the point – introducing a closed network today is like launching AOL after Netscape’s IPO. 2 years later, and bank coins still aren’t the answer https://t.co/39EAiSJwAz https://t.co/e7t7iz7h21
— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) February 14, 2019
Just Use a Dollar Instead
Ripple CEO further explained that there is no point to have a dollar-pegged stablecoin that will be moved within the JPM ledger. This solution doesn’t bring anything new to the table, and it would make more sense for customers to stick to USD instead.
Garlinghouse earlier claimed that JPM Coin wouldn’t work given that multiple banks would start issuing their own coins. JPMorgan is still a closed system while RippleNet already connects hundreds of banks.
Questioned if the Ripple is similar to a traditional cryptocurrency because to a lot of people, it doesn’t sound like a decentralized product, even though cryptocurrency promotes decentralization, Garlinghouse replied:
“Coin? Is BBVA? Is PNC? And the answer is no. And so does that we’re going to have all these different coins, and does that mean we’re back to where we are with lack of interoperability? I don’t get it.”
Next, Garlinghouse talked about his second major objection to JPM Coin:
“So, let’s think about this. JPM Coin, they announced for institutional customers, if you give them a dollar in deposits, they’ll give you a JPM Coin that you then can move within the JPM ledger.
Wait a minute, just use the dollar! I really don’t understand. If you’re just moving within the JPM ledger, and it has to be dollar-to-dollar, one-to-one backing, I don’t understand what problem that solves.”
Another topic that Malandrino asked Garlinghouse about was the need for regulatory certainty in the U.S. The Ripple CEO made this brilliant reply:
.@bgarlinghouse responding to @jillmalandrino on the need for regulatory certainty in the United States: “We’ve been asked as an industry not to speed, but we weren’t given a speed limit.” #DCBlockchain Tune in now! https://t.co/W2KYZe6idS pic.twitter.com/D4lPG6FLzk
— Chamber of Digital Commerce (@DigitalChamber) March 6, 2019
Ripple Scam?
However, this week came around stories about Ripple being a scam. Forbes’s journalist wrote, what he called “an analysis” where he tried to prove that Ripple was designed as a “pump and dump” project because the company works really hard to pump the price, but does so cleverly so that only those who look closely enough can spot the issues.
The truth is, and we already wrote about it, that Ripple has indeed issues with central control. Ripple claims not to own or have created XRP, however it controls over 60% of the total XRP circulating supply. Ripple argues that XRP is an open source project that is separate from the Ripple company. It, however, claims the group of developers gave it a large percentage of XRP.
That Forbes is in favor of JPM Coin is a well-known fact so it seems that this so-called “analysis” is just one among many of low quality paid articles by, who else than, JPMorgan.
*To learn more about XRP coin, Ripple company, and their innovative solutions, please check out our awesome guide.
