- David Schwartz, CTO of Ripple, gave an overview of the challenges associated with the adoption of XRP by financial institutions.
- Schwartz highlighted the limitations of JPMorgan Bank’s digital currency, the JPM Coin.
The last week hasn’t been too good for altcoins. While the price of Bitcoin rose by almost 30% in one month and 6.42% in one week, Ethereum and XRP lost 4.95% and 5.19% of their price in the same period. In this sense, a member of the XRP community expressed their dissatisfaction on Twitter.
The user asked Ripple’s CTO, David Schwartz, if a comment he made in 2017 about the increased adoption of XRP would remain an unfulfilled prediction, as an increase in acceptance is generally associated with a corresponding increase in the price of XRP. Schwartz responded that his comment was merely intended to express that Ripple will implement a strategy aimed at increased adoption and “will not wait for banks to introduce digital assets on their own initiative”.
The user also asked Schwartz about the reasons that would lead a bank to introduce an asset like XRP. He also raised the possibility of a “coordinated opposition operation” by financial institutions, which could render XRP practically useless. Ripple’s CTO denied such a possibility and first explained the obstacles that slow down the adoption of XRP:
Regulatory uncertainty, last mile problems, fear of reprisals from existing partners, and so on. Another big thing is that the very best customers are ones that are going to use bridge assets to build new products. They’re heavily motivated to see projects to completion and will push the benefits all the way down to customers. But in that case, even when they’re 100% ready to go, they still have 0 customers because the product is new. So it’s slow to get momentum.
The obstacles posed by Schwartz, especially regulation, could even cause Ripple to migrate its headquarters. As its CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, has repeatedly highlighted the U.S. should encourage innovation. Instead, the current regulations and the legal framework have the opposite effect, according to BG. If not, the in San Francisco based company could go to the UK or Japan, or Singapore.
Ripple’s CTO and his views on JPMorgan’s currency
On the other hand, Schwartz commented on the official launch of the digital currency of the banking giant JPMorgan. Known as JPM Coin, the currency is intended to be an instrument to increase its international payment capabilities. Therefore, it has been classified as a potential competitor to XRP. However, Schwartz pointed out the limitations of JPM Coin:
JPM Coin will only be useful for people who trust JPM, are in a jurisdiction that’s compatible with JPM, and aren’t concerned about their sovereignty. A system nobody can own and control is, IMO, better – especially if you compete with JPM, or hope to.