Ripple CEO: Bitcoin has already succeeded as a digital asset

Earlier this year, Chris Larsen, founder and CEO of Ripple Labs, made headlines for saying, ‘I don’t think the world needs a new currency. We already have enough.’ Larsen also seemed to think that the technology behind Bitcoin and other forms of distributed ledgers is far more important than creating new currencies or digital assets.

But Larsen seemed to have decided to change his usual criticism of Bitcoin during a recent interview on Brett King’s Breaking Banks radio show.

Larsen's changing attitude towards Bitcoin

During the interview, Larsen was asked about his views on the debate between Bitcoin and blockchain. Although Larsen has always been unimpressed with Bitcoin in the past, in this interview he expressed his acceptance of the concept of this new digital asset:

“I think they are fundamentally different things. Bitcoin is a digital asset, and digital assets are very interesting, they are a brand new thing, and there are all kinds of powerful use cases that a lot of people are looking forward to.”

Larsen continued:

“As a digital asset, Bitcoin has already succeeded.”

He also pointed out that Ripple has strong currency inclusion, suggesting that Bitcoin can be sent through the Ripple network.

Ripple XPR vs. Bitcoin BTC

Another interesting statement from Larsen regarding the relationship between Bitcoin and Ripple is,

"You must not compare the two, they are two completely different things."

Larson seemed to be alluding to the fact that some users believe that Bitcoin is more useful because of its decentralization, while others believe that Ripple's permissioned distributed ledger is more valuable. While Bitcoin and Ripple are not necessarily direct competitors, the presence of the XRP token in the Ripple system makes XRP and BTC somewhat competitive.

It will be interesting to watch this competition between the two, the real difference between XRP and BTC is that one is issued by the "Central Party" while the other is controlled by computer code and mathematics. One of the main breakthroughs of Bitcoin is that there is no central bank that can issue it in arbitrary quantities, and we have seen the centralized issuance model become a problem for XRP in the past. At present, both digital assets are nothing more than a means of storing value, but the market will eventually decide which issuance model (or digital asset) it prefers.

Ripple’s real rival is not Bitcoin

Although Ripple and Bitcoin are not direct competitors, there are already many competitors in the market for permissioned distributed ledgers, such as Eris Industries and Hyperledger, which also provide similar permissioned distributed ledger systems, but do not issue new tokens like XRP. It seems that these are the real competitors of Ripple. Whether Bitcoin or permissioned distributed ledgers can become the technology that supports the future economy is still unknown, but many companies have already invested in this emerging digital payment field.