Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse is firing back at J.P. Morgan over its new JPM coin utility, and making some interesting points about how crypto is going to evolve this year and beyond.
Just yesterday, J.P. Morgan dropped a Valentine’s Day bombshell of news, suggesting that the company will come up with its own cryptocurrency that will help with settlement efficiency and more.
But in the “analysts fine print” around the announcement, some experts were implying that J.P. Morgan was also slightly altering the crypto landscape toward what some call “bank coins” or isolated cryptocurrency systems.
Think of cryptocurrencies like Ripple (XRP) as the open source version of cryptocurrency – working across all platforms and without limitations connected to a brand or company.
By contrast, JPM coin is a “branded cryptocurrency” that will have its own characteristics depending on what J.P. Morgan decides as a company.
Traders interested in really scouring the coinscape have to look at how cryptocurrencies will work on exchanges, what currency exchange transactions will be like, and much more.
According to reports in Cointelegraph today, Garlinghouse is throwing some shade at the issue of bank issued digital coins.
“As predicted, banks are changing their tune on crypto,” he recently tweeted. “But this JPM project misses the point — introducing a closed network today is like launching AOL after Netscape’s IPO. 2 years later, and bank coins still aren’t the answer.”
Reporting today, Marie Huillet cites an article that Garlinghouse wrote two years ago where he talked about a “fragmented currency landscape.” Looking at the “plumbing” of cryptocurrency, Garlinghouse argued that bank coins might not make as smooth transaction vehicles as universal cryptocurrencies made to perform as a “one-size-fits-all” digital currency.
Huillet also cites a Bloomberg article which quotes an industry expert who has an interesting view on this:
Calling JPM coin “more evolutionary than revolutionary,” Travis Kling of crypto hedge fund Ikigai Asset Management also talks about how private blockchain is different than trendsetters like Ripple, which are again built for the global (universal) audience.
This might seem like a footnote to some, but besides the explosive news that Jamie Dimon has changed his tune on cryptocurrencies, the JPM coin really illustrates the tension between traditional front runner cryptocurrencies and altcoins that favor an open-source approach and bank coins, which includes the category of central bank coins issued by national government banks. How this plays out is going to make a difference in what tomorrow’s blockchain looks like – so stay tuned!
