Ripple Executive Says That Days of Bitcoin Maximalism Are "Over"

On a recent Lend Academy podcast, Ripple SVP Asheesh Birla, who also serves as the general manager of the RippleNet, opined that the days of Bitcoin maximalism were over while speaking about his overall perception of the market:        

“I think that the days when folks believed that there would only be Bitcoin, I think, are over. I think it’s clear that there’s gonna be a lot of digital assets and there’s gonna be a lot more traditional assets that are gonna be tokenized.”       

Like Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, Birla is convinced that Bitcoin cannot serve as a viable payment method but he does view as “an innovative alternative to gold”:      

“When you see market uncertainly like you are seeing today, with the Fed and other central banks printing money, it could like this, you know, safe haven like gold was or is today.”     

From lending to e-commerce  

When it comes to XRP, Birla believes that it is a conduit to a more efficient global payments system.

He says that Ripple will continue expanding its XRP-powered On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) solution globally to those countries where they will be able to gain regulatory approval.

As reported by U.Today, the blockchain decacorn introduced XRP loans for RippleNet customers last month. Birla mentions that lending is only their first product, and they soon plan to venture into e-commerce:

“Lending is just one example of other products that we can offer our RippleNet customers that solve real problems for them. You get lending down, you get payments down, that opens up a lot of other white space for us to innovate in as well. One in particular is e-commerce”

RippleNet could bridge CBDCs

While many are convinced that central bank digital currencies pose an existential threat to XRP, Birla states that they have nothing to do with blockchain.  

RippleNet, in turn, could bridge centralized CBDCs into an interoperable network:

“RippleNet can actually take these local CBDCs and bridge them to make money move more efficient, so I think that it's a very good thing for companies like Ripple.”