Ripple CTO: XRP can't fail due to SEC lawsuit as market cap is too big (2024)

• Schwartz said about the outcome of the SEC lawsuit that it will not affect the existence of XRP because the market cap is too big.
• According to the Ripple CTO, Stellar has a “very similar” technology, but a different strategy.

Ripple’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO), David Schwartz, spoke with Coindesk TV about recent developments in its legal battle with the SEC, the supposed reasons for the recent XRP price pump, and the differences between his company and Stellar. Regarding Ripple’s recent victory in court, under which the company is obtaining access to external and partially internal SEC documents regarding the classification of Bitcoin and Ethereum as non-securities, Schwartz stated that the SEC lawsuit came out of nowhere:

I think the primary argument that we’re trying to make here is that the market considers them similar, we consider them similar, all the evidence suggests that they are similar. And then the SEC comes out of nowhere, and says ‘No’, they are completely different.

Schwartz also addressed the question of whether the outcome of the court case could affect the existence of XRP. But the Ripple CTO dismissed that suggestion, effectively saying that XRP is too big to fail. The only reason to be “concerned is that it’s always hard to tell,” Schwartz said.

“A good example,” according to Schwartz, is Bitcoin’s drama over block size expansion. “It all worked out okay, but there wasn’t certainly a lack of drama. […] And the reason not to worry, I would say, because the market caps of these systems are in the billions of dollars. People acting in their own self-interest are not going to allow the ecosystem to die if there’s a way to save it,” as Schwartz explained.

“That’s all that’s holding these systems together. The governing bodies don’t have any legal authority to control these systems. It’s just people want them to work,” Schwartz continued.

Schwartz on the XRP pump and Stellar as a competitor

Schwartz, meanwhile, was hesitant to offer firm reasons for XRP’s recent price surge, but suggested that rumors of a relisting of XRP by Coinbase “may have triggered some upward movement.” In addition, he expressed that the SEC litigation hearing and related hopes “might have impacted the price, but these are just guesses.”

Moreover, the hosts also confronted Schwartz about the progress of perceived nemesis, Stellar and its founder Jed McCaleb. As CNF reported, Stellar is currently being used to develop two central bank digital currencies, the Bermuda dollar and e-Hryvnia in Ukraine.

The Ripple CTO began by highlighting the differences between the two projects, explaining that Ripple as a company “made a big bet in 2014/2015 on enterprise payments and XRP as a payment solution”. He continued:

We directly worked very hard on allowing banks and financial institutions to be able to use XRP as a way to settle their payments in just a few seconds, and as an alternative to the corresponding banking system. There’s a lot of work involved in doing that. […] I think we made a lot more progress on that. We have millions of transactions that take place […] on the RippleNet by financial institutions.

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At the same time, Schwartz elicited that the technologies are “very similar,” as Stellar “basically started copying the XRP ledger”. Nevertheless, over time, he said, the direction of the projects have changed significantly:

So there are similarities on in terms of the technology, but there are a lot of differences on the way we’re perceived in the market. […] If you look at the projects being build on the XRP Ledger, and look at the projects being build on Stellar, they are different projects, even though the technologies are similar.

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