Tom Zschach, chief innovation officer at Swift, has suggested that there is no evidence that enterprise blockchain firm Ripple is actually taking over the financial system.
As reported by U.Today, Zschach previously took a swipe at Ripple, arguing that the fact that the company has survived its legal battle with the SEC does not actually qualify as resilience.
Neutrality, governance, and trust
The SWIFT executive has argued in favor of having neutral governance and establishing shared standards while also predicting that the traditional finance (TradFi) sector will be able to absorb the best of public chains.
In his most recent social media post, Zschach further explained what he envisions by "neutrality" in the financial sector. "Neutrality in finance isn’t about how many nodes you run. It’s about whether outcomes are fair, enforceable, and trusted," he said.
Expanding on his earlier take, Zschach argues that Swift is capable of complementing open and permissionless blockchains by bringing "governance and trust."
Will banks be comfortable with XRP?
Zschach has also questioned whether banks will actually be comfortable with using the XRP token since it is not regulated money, and it is not on the bank's balance sheet. Hence, there is virtually no legal enforceability, and final settlement is not guaranteed if there is some sort of disruption.
Beyond legal and economic concerns, there are also some economic issues since banks are unlikely to pay an additional toll for using external assets when they are stablecoins and tokenized deposits.
"If tokenized deposits and regulated stablecoins scale, why would banks pay a toll to an external asset when they can settle directly in instruments they already control and trust?" Zschach said.
Dan Burgin
Vladislav Sopov
U.Today Editorial Team