Caitlin Long, founder and CEO of Avanti Financial Group, recently came under fire from the XRP community after lambasting Ripple during a recent appearance on the "Gold Goats 'n Guns" podcast.
In response to the criticism, David Schwartz, chief technology officer at Ripple, said that he was "available" to chat about the facts regarding Ripple, XRP Ledger and the RLUSD stablecoin.
"It's not going to take over"
Long stated that banking institutions have always been suspicious of XRP Ledger because it is a "centralized network." She added that Ripple had failed to make substantial progress despite being around for more than a decade.
"It's not going to take over. It's not. If it were going to take over, it would have taken over a long time ago," Long added.
The fact that Ripple has now pivoted to the stablecoin sector is "an admission" that the base layer did not get the level of adoption that they wanted.
She has criticized the tokenomics of the project, arguing that people who extract money upfront can never be trusted.
While Ripple never had an initial coin offering (ICO), it is worth noting that 100 billion XRP tokens were premined by Ripple founders. A staggering 20 billion tokens were allocated to the founders, while 55 billion XRPs were also placed in Ripple's escrow in 2017.
Critics have long argued that XRP is centralized due to such controversial allocation, with the 2020 SEC lawsuit also centering on the issue.
Pushback from XRP community
However, Ripple proponents continue to argue that XRP was worthless when it was originally created, and the XRP Ledger is actually decentralized.
Moreover, RLUSD is also issued on XRP Ledger (even though Ethereum-based tokens account for the majority of the supply).
Dan Burgin
Vladislav Sopov
U.Today Editorial Team