Ripple’s head of product just gave a wide-ranging interview with CNBC’s Crypto Trader.
The one-on-one discussion tackles the use cases of XRP and Ripple’s overall suite of software solutions, including xCurrent and xRapid.
When asked why financial institutions would risk transferring value using xRapid, which utilizes XRP, Asheesh Birla said the overall costs and volatility involved are far less than fiat.
“We asked our customers – and using xRapid, the volatility that our end-customers are using, the xRapid end customers are using, is only a few seconds. And so we asked them, ‘A few seconds of XRP volatility – how do you feel about that?’
And overwhelmingly they said, ‘Listen, I will take a few seconds of XRP volatility versus holding Mexican pesos for weeks or months, like I have to. Because the volatility of a few seconds of XRP versus the volatility of a week holding a local currency is a huge difference. They’ll take the seconds in XRP any day.”
According to Ripple, smaller financial institutions and startups are more likely to see significant savings by using xRapid for cross-border transactions. For example, Western Union recently announced that its tests with XRP did not save it any money compared to its existing business model.
Birla also compared XRP’s utility to Bitcoin’s and responded to criticism that XRP is too centralized due to Ripple’s direct involvement with the ledger and the fact that it owns 60% of the total supply, with 91% of that investment locked in escrow.
