Ripple CEO Blames Bitcoin Tribalism For Holding Crypto Back

Key Insights:

• Crypto polarisation is unhealthy, according to Brad Garlinghouse.
• The Ripple boss says he owns both Bitcoin and Ethereum, and there is room for them all.
• Tribalism occurs when a community backs its own favored project and token and berates its rivals.

Speaking to CNBC, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse admitted to holding both Bitcoin and Ethereum but said that the tribalism in the $2 trillion industry is holding it back.

“Polarization isn’t healthy in my judgment,” he said, referring to the communities that back their own favored projects and tokens and berate the rival ones.

“I own bitcoin, I own ether, I own some others. I am an absolute believer that this industry is going to continue to thrive.”

The Ripple boss continued to state that “all boats can rise” before using Yahoo, where he used to be an executive, as an example.

“Yahoo could be successful, and so could eBay … They’re solving different problems,” he said before adding that there were different use cases, different audiences, and different markets.

“I think a lot of those parallels exist today,” he concluded in reference to the crypto industry. Analyst “PlanB” saw the irony in a CEO talking about Bitcoin tribalism.

If you know why bitcoin has no CEO, then you are ahead of 99% of investors and main stream media.

Bonus points if you can answer with a Satoshi quote. pic.twitter.com/Ix1RH1UBrE

— PlanB (@100trillionUSD) April 20, 2022

Tribalism Everywhere

Ripple has its own “tribe” called the “XRP Army,” so Bitcoin (BTC) and its brethren are not solely to blame for this apparent scourge. The Ripple community often berates Bitcoin, claiming that their favored token, XRP, is faster and more efficient for transactions.

The Bitcoin maximalists counter that with the centralization argument, stating that a company controls almost half the supply of XRP tokens as it has placed them in escrow.

There is also a similar pattern from the Ethereum (ETH) community which is constantly on the defense from rival blockchain communities such as Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA), and Polkadot (DOT). Aficionados for each particular network claim theirs is superior to Ethereum, and they have often been dubbed “Ethereum killers,” though none of them have yet to live up to this moniker.

As Garlinghouse pointed out, each network has a different application. Bitcoin is currently seen as a store of value asset, XRP is a cross-border payments platform for financial institutions, and Ethereum is a smart contract and decentralized application network. There is room for all of them, and the entire crypto market is still in its infancy.

XRP Price Outlook

Ripple’s native token has declined marginally on the day by 1.7%. At the time of writing, XRP was trading at $0.756, but it has gained 4.2% over the past week.

The token is way down from its all-time high, however, having lost 78% from the $3.40 price it hit in January 2018.

A lot hinges on its ongoing battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. If the company wins the case, the token could surge again, but it is likely to tank if the SEC wins and XRP is deemed a security.