Ripple CEO Tells Banks That Crypto Isn’t a Bad Word

Brad Garlinghouse is the Ripple CEO and is a highly influential figure in the cryptocurrency industry. He has been speaking recently about his battle to convince banks bosses to trust cryptocurrencies, as well as their future plans.

Details of His Comment

Garlinghouse was speaking in an interview with CNN. As part of this, he told an interesting story about being at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He said that someone –whom he didn’t name – pointed out that crypto “is still a bad word here”.

Therefore, a lot of his work is now based on meeting with regulators and senior bank officials. He aims to convince them that the blockchain can solve real-world banking problems.

The Ripple CEO also pointed out the importance of staying compliant. He said that regulators quickly feel comfortable once they realise that “you’re not circumventing regulatory frameworks”.

The Liquidity Issue

Another point covered in the interview was around liquidity. Garlinghouse noted that XRP had been used for $54 million in transfers to Mexico in the past week. He stated that this represents 7.5% of the total amount of USD converted to Mexican Pesos. This is an increase from 3% at the end of 2019.

The high level of growth was explained with the phrase “liquidity begets liquidity.” Garlinghouse confirmed that Ripple’s value is based on the liquidity increasing all the time. As the liquidity increases, this encourages more users to join the network. This in turn means that it obtains even more liquidity.

The Current Figures for Ripple

How has all of this hard work translated into growth of the XRP network? The figures for October of last year listed 168 customers. We know that it has grown since then, as Bangladesh-based Bank Asia joined at the start of 2020. This business has around $3.4 billion of assets under its controls.

Those numbers from 2019 also showed that 118 of their members were banks. Another 16 users of the network were money transfer companies. They also have a couple of crypto exchanges and auditing heavyweight Deloitte, among others.

In terms of its price, Ripple has been less volatile lately, fluctuating between $0.27 and $0.30. A recent announcement that they plan an IPO in the next year suggests that they will soon have a large amount of extra funds to move forward with new projects.

Looking ahead, the Ripple CEO confirmed that they want Ripple to become like the Amazon of the crypt world. He pointed out that he doesn’t pay too much attention to the token’s price changes in the short term.