Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse just sat down for an interview with Stanford Legal.
The podcast, hosted by Stanford Law professors Pam Karlan and Joe Bankman, analyzed the current and future legality and utility of blockchain and cryptocurrency.
On the subject of whether crypto can replace fiat currency, Garlinghouse said he believes fiat currencies in G20 countries are working very well.
“I don’t think we’re going to be buying coffee at Starbucks with Bitcoin or XRP anytime soon. I think we’ve got to ask ourselves: What problem is that solving? You were talking about paying for the day spa bill and how you do that, but I think in some ways the friction – fiat currency, the US dollar in this case works pretty well, and so we need to make sure it’s better than that before we talk about it as a currency…
What I think about the G20 world – I think fiat currencies work really well and I don’t see a reason that you would, as a consumer, in the next 10 years be using XRP to make consumer payments.
There are economies where the fiat currency is at best a weak currency. And in those contexts, if I were a consumer experiencing hyperinflation – would you rather hold a cryptocurrency or your fiat currency? And in a lot of those cases, you’re seeing people take their dollars, or not dollars, pesos of various sorts, and saying, ‘I’d rather hold this because it’s a better asset to hold in terms of its potential appreciation and lack of inflation.'”