Ripple CEO Fires Back at NYT Reporter, ‘Ripple Has No Plans to Reset Our Strategy’

Ripple (XRP) CEO Brad Garlinghouse has responded to criticism from New York Times technology reporter Nathaniel Popper after news surfaced that Santander Bank is still hesitant to use the company’s native token XRP.

Popper took aim at Garlinghouse, citing statements by the CEO in January 2018 around banks “planning to use [the] XRP token in the near future.” He went on to say that “people used their savings to invest in XRP based on the forward looking projections that Brad Garlinghouse gave,” adding:

“If investors put their money into XRP on the day @BradGarlinghouse talked about the banks planning to use XRP — and held it to today — they would have lost around 90% of their investment.”

“Ripple has no plans to ‘reset’ our strategy.”

In response, Garlinghouse made it clear that he believed “using XRP to solve a $10 trillion problem, like cross-border payments, is working.”

The CEO further explained that On-Demand Liquidity (formerly xRapid) has accounted for more than $2 billion in transactions since launch, citing that its volume was up 11 times in the first half of 2020 when compared with the previous first half of 2019.

According to Ripple explorer Bloxy, the network has been producing around 900,000 transactions a day during 2020, with a spike of 3,000,000 transactions on Jan. 7, 2020.

ODL currently supports over two dozen customers, Garlinghouse shared, including MoneyGram, Golance, Viamericas, FlashFX and Azimo.

Popper didn’t help his case when he got Garlinghouse’s Twitter handle incorrect, a fact that was brought up at the end of Garlinghouse’s response:

“P.S. @nathanielpopper, for future reference — quick fact check and in keeping with NYT standards — my Twitter handle is @bgarlinghouse, not @bradgarlinghouse”

XRP Army reinforcements have arrived

True to the well-known passion of the XRP community, the thread by Ripple’s CEO quickly received a string of support from the community with many users complimenting him on his thoughtful response. YouTuber and XRP supporter CryptoEri said, “So glad you spoke out. That was the correct thing to do.”

One user shared a picture of a Bitcoin (BTC) ad in today’s Financial Times newspaper, suggesting the timing might not be altogether unrelated:

Look what happened to run in the Financial Times today @bgarlinghouse.Coincidence I’m sure. . . . https://t.co/84RsaNy9Bv pic.twitter.com/rl2ADtPJ8W