The founder of the blockchain analytics firm Messari is clarifying his skepticism on the future of Ripple and XRP.
Ryan Selkis has previously declared that the digital asset XRP is not truly decentralized. He says XRP is centrally managed and controlled by the fintech startup Ripple, which owns more than half of the total supply and routinely sells portions of its holdings.
But in a new interview on the Money 3.0 podcast with Abra CEO Bill Barhydt, Selkis says he’s actually impressed with Ripple’s technology, although he still thinks the company lacks transparency and has an uphill battle in convincing banks and financial institutions that they should use XRP for cross-border payments.
“I think Ripple the company has built one of the more impressive tech stacks and has much closer to product-market fit than 99% of other projects that are in crypto. The issue has always been what I’ve called the ‘Jekyll and Hyde of crypto’.
On the one hand, you’ve got Dr. Jekyll who’s trying to disintermediate SWIFT and working with all these banks and got this phenomenal team and board and advisory members. And they are creating interesting tech, solving real problems, and were very early as pioneers in the industry.
But then there’s Mr. Hyde who comes out with these bullshit transparency reports where they kind of obfuscate how funds are actually flowing, and they’re not quite transparent about the actual funding model for the company, which is more or less a continuous fundraise, but one that’s treated as revenue.”
Selkis also outlines one scenario that he thinks could convince banks to adopt XRP en masse.
“I’ll tell you right now, I still think that Ripple could end up doing very well if the banks take the bait and are offered sweetheart deals to buy some of these assets for pennies on the dollar, 50 cents on the dollar in return for actually partnering very publicly with Ripple. So, it’s like fake-it-until-you-make-it coin.
The revenue model and what the company actually delivers are two very, very different things. The point of contention for me has always been how much XRP is actually being used within the company’s core payments platform. And the answer has typically been – not really.”
You can check out the full interview below.
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