Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse outlined the company's views on XRP, cross-border payments, and the broader digital asset market, while emphasizing the need for clearer regulatory rules in the cryptocurrency sector.
In his most recent interview, Garlinghouse stated that cryptocurrencies need to have practical use cases and solve specific problems. He cited cross-border payments as one of the areas where XRP is utilized by Ripple.
Garlinghouse Emphasizes the use of XRP in payments
Garlinghouse indicates that Ripple uses XRP to address the challenges in cross-border payments, and points out that this asset features fast transaction speeds and relatively low transaction costs.
He also discussed the potential applications of digital assets in machine-to-machine payments and small-value transactions. Garlinghouse mentioned that such use cases may require payment systems capable of handling transactions involving amounts of “less than a penny and change.”
At the same time, he stated that XRP is not applicable to all use cases, and different digital assets can serve different purposes.
Ripple believes that regulatory clarity is very important
Garlinghouse also discussed the impact of regulation on the adoption of cryptocurrencies.
He said that in the absence of clear regulatory requirements, financial institutions are cautious about adopting digital assets. Taking GENIUS Act as an example, he stated that this bill provides greater clarity for stablecoins, especially in terms of information disclosure and reserves.
Garlinghouse indicates that there has been an increase in stablecoin payment activities after more explicit regulations were introduced.
He also mentioned the legal case between Ripple and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and stated that the company spent four years and approximately $150 million to deal with this case.
Garlinghouse pointed out that the court determined that XRP itself is not a security, which brought greater clarity to Ripple. He added that the broader cryptocurrency industry still faces regulatory uncertainties regarding how different digital assets should be classified.
Ripple Expands Payment Services
Garlinghouse indicates that Ripple was initially focused on banks and payment service providers, but is now expanding its business coverage through acquisitions.
He highlighted that Ripple acquired the financial management company GTreasury, which serves large enterprises. Garlinghouse stated that companies using GTreasury processed a total of approximately $13 trillion in payments last year.
Ripple believes that the financial teams and treasurers' networks of enterprises using this platform could become a distribution channel for its payment technology.
Garlinghouse indicates that Ripple can offer payment options based on stablecoins or XRP to enterprises seeking alternative international transaction solutions.
Garlinghouse distinguishes between Ripple and XRP.
The CEO, Ripple, also discussed the relationship between the company and XRP.
He said that XRP Ledger is open-source and decentralized, while Ripple controls about 2% of the validators within it. Garlinghouse indicates that holding XRP does not mean having control over network governance, as this ledger does not use a proof-of-stake system.
He believes that therefore, it should not be interpreted that Ripple holding XRP means that they have control over XRP Ledger.
Garlinghouse states that cryptocurrencies can play different roles
Garlinghouse also discussed the potential role of cryptocurrencies as long-term financial assets.
He described Bitcoin as a means of value storage and indicated that other digital assets may evolve around different use cases. He specifically noted that payments are the area that XRP focuses on.
Garlinghouse indicates that, with the development of the cryptocurrency industry, he expects financial institutions to continue to explore digital assets.
For XRP, the focus remains on payments, financial institutions, and the use of blockchain technology for cross-border value transfer.
Source attribution
This article is translated and organized based on the report of CoinPedia, and the author is Sohrab Khawas.
