Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse Tells Banks That 'Crypto Is Not a Bad Word'

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse’s mission is to demolish bankers’ fear of cryptocurrencies and get them on board with the new asset class.

During a recent interview with CNN, Garlinghouse explained that “once regulators understand you're not circumventing regulatory frameworks they get very comfortable very quickly.”

Garlinghouse said that someone at the World Economic Forum in Davos told him that “crypto is still a bad word here.” Because of this attitude in traditional finance, a big part of his work is explaining to bankers how crypto can solve real-world problems while staying compliant:

“A lot of what I am doing [...] is meeting with regulators, meeting with very senior people at banks and explaining to them how crypto can be used — specifically XRP — can be used to solve a real problem, not to circumvent regulation. [...] Once people understand that, they very quickly become disarmed, it’s no longer a bad word.”

Garlinghouse also addressed the adoption of Ripple’s crypto asset for on-demand liquidity, XRP, noting that last week it was used for $54 million in cash flows to Mexico. He claimed that this is 7.5% of the total flow of U.S. dollars to Mexican pesos, up from about 3% in December.

The CEO explained that such fast growth is due to the fact that “liquidity begets liquidity.” Garlinghouse said that the value of a product like XRP-based on-demand liquidity increases with the liquidity of the market, and the liquidity increases when — attracted by the high liquidity — more institutions join the network.

The fast development of Ripple

As of October 2019, Ripple had a reported 168 customers comprised of 118 banks, 16 remittance/money transfer firms, seven foreign exchange companies, two cryptocurrency exchanges, 11 payments providers, six software and technology firms, and eight others, including international auditing and professional services giant Deloitte. 

Bank Asia, a Bangladesh-based bank with $3.4 billion of assets, joined Ripple’s blockchain-based financial services network, RippleNet, earlier this month.

Cointelegraph recently featured Brad Garlinghouse in the Cointelegraph Top 100 list of the most influential people in the cryptocurrency and blockchain sector.