If you're in the cryptocurrency space you likely either love or hate Ripple, but for the same reason - they work with the big banks.
Now a new interview with Reuters brings to light that banks switching over to being powered by blockchain is an uphill battle, and not expected to happen tomorrow.
“I will concede, we haven’t gotten there yet” Ripple’s chief cryptographer David Schwartz said speaking to Reuters.
"The feedback from the banks is you can’t put the whole world on a blockchain.” added Marcus Treacher, senior vice president of customer success.
Ripple is also learning that some sectors of banking are likely never to move to the blockchain. “What we hear from many of our customers is that it’s imperative to keep their transactions private, process thousands every second, and accommodate every type of currency and asset imaginable” Schwartz added.
Now to be fair, just because Ripple isn't accomplishing everything they want to immediately let's not discount what they have accomplished. Banks have been impressed with Ripple's XCurrent technology which utilizes an immutable interledger protocol, and in the use case of cross-border payments banks can see transactions that used to take days literally take just seconds. Because of this you may still see Ripple's tech used to move trillions of dollars in the global market.
A big goal like revamping how banks fundamentally function is simply bound to be a massive challenge - and i'm absolutely not making the case that Ripple is failing by any means. However - there's a couple questions worth asking; how long will investors wait? and what progress could competing companies make while Ripple still looks to solidify it's role in the banking world?
The full interview with Reuters can be read here.
Author: Mark Pippen
London News Desk
