Brad Garlinghouse gave an interview to Fortune , which described how his company is moving, including how Ripple plans to deploy its huge XRP reserves, which it describes as a "strategic tool."
Fortune : Ripple and XRP - competitors for other blockboys and digital currencies?
Brad Garlinghouse: For a while, Ripple did not have the main blockage, because it's not bitcoin. Then we realized that we are not "anti-banking", not "anti-government" and not "anti-fiat." This helped to remain at the opinion and to keep own course in the face of more libertarian elements in криптовойлютном space.
In 2017people realized that there would not a single crypto currency for everyone. There are vertical solutions in which XRP solves payment problems; the etherium is focused on smart contracts; bitcoin is increasingly being used to store value. All of them are not competitors to each other. I really would like bitcoin and etherium to achieve proper recognition.
What for to banks XRP?
It's about liquidity. An asset like XRP can be a real value proposition. The need for liquidity for banks today is managed by literally ten trillion dollars of cash assets, which are both on their own and on external accounts. We believe that this is a very inefficient model. You can use digital assets to finance liquidity, and Ripple has unique advantages here. Bitcoin may need up to four hours to complete the transaction. In XRP it takes 3.6 seconds.
Explain how Ripple will distribute XRP among banks
The program Ripple Net Accelerator was created, within which up to $ 300 million is allocated to stimulate and accelerate the spread of [our technologies]. It reminds the first days of Visa. Roughly speaking, we pay the bank to speed up the use of our program, and we pay in XRP. But if the bank does not want XRP, there is always an option with the US dollar.
At the moment we have not paid the banks in XRP yet. Although this is not entirely true. We conducted an experiment 18 months ago. We gave very small amount of XRP to dozens of banks to demonstrate its multilateral nature. This is our vision of addressing the liquidity problem for banks. I'm not going to just give it to them. This will become a motivating factor if a number of consecutive events occur.
How does the Ripple pricing model work ?
The model consists of three parts - a license for software, professional services and commissions for transactions.
The price depends on the size of the banks and the number of transactions for which the bank intends to use Ripple. This is a big commitment. We are not talking about licenses for 10 seats from Salesforce, which can cost several thousand a year. You can add at least one more 0.
Are you worried about the prospect that central banks can enter their tokens?
No. We were fortunate enough to talk to dozens of central banks around the world. I do not think that banks will ever give up a currency.
What does "gostoken" mean? Look at this piece of paper [holds $ 20 banknote], it's already tokenized, it's a unique $ 20 banknote with a serial number. What do you mean "you take this banknote and tokenize it"? I do not know what exactly this means. There is much talk about this, but I do not know.
It's been almost a year since you became CEO. How does the relationship with the other two co-founders of Ripple?
Chris [Larsen] is 100% involved in the company. He is the chairman, and I talk with him every day. He has a very clear idea of Internet values. However, I do not intersect with Jed [McCaleb]. I've met him several times, and I know what Stellar does [his company], but that's it.
Ripple earns ? And what is the share of the proceeds from the sale of XRP ?
Suffice it to say that we have a positive balance, and this gives us the opportunity to invest in what is good for the ecosystem and for our company. Obviously, we are selling part of XRP. Transparency in the XRP markets is very important for us, so every quarter we publish a report that indicates how much we sold on the open market and institutional investors.
And yes, we could not have a positive balance without selling XRP. This is due to fact that XRP is a strategic tool for investing in the ecosystem. This gives us the opportunity hire the best engineers in the world and invest in the platform and technology.
What do not people understand in Ripple?
In my opinion, a common misconception when they say "Ripple is a centralized platform". For me this is an outdated look. Our IRP technology has open source code, like XRP Ledger.
If Ripple as a company leaves, then XRP will continue to bargain. For me, the definition of decentralization is precisely this. At the same time, the price may decrease, because Ripple, as the central player in the XRP ecosystem, is investing in what is good for it, but I think that there is still a misunderstanding of centralization and decentralization. However, I do not think that all this worries the reader of Fortune, this is more technical side.
Ripple has a great vision for the emergence of the "Internet values". For us, the goal is to act as a catalyst for this vision and to connect the repositories of value that the banks are playing. Those in the crypto-currency community, who see them as enemies, themselves create obstacles for development.