The thing I think is often misunderstood about Ripple is people say, 'Oh, Ripple is a centralized platform.' To me, this is a legacy perspective. Ripple's technology, IRP, is open source; XRP Ledger is open source.
— Brad Garlinghouse
In 2017, people have realized there isn't going to be one crypto to rule them all. You're seeing vertical solutions where XRP is focused on payment problems, Ethereum is focused on smart contracts, and increasingly, bitcoin is a store of value. Those aren't competitive. In fact, I want bitcoin and Ethereum to be successful.
When you look around Silicon Valley at new companies, there are very few ideas that are going to make a dent in the universe.
In the bubble that was dot-com 1.0 emerged Google, Amazon, and some of the most valuable companies on the planet. They were successful because they focused on their customer; they focused on revolutionary products.
As I was looking around, to me, what was happening in the blockchain and crypto world was a movement.
Blockchain is like the new big data or AI - too many people are using it as a buzzword and not focused solving a real problem. We like to call them Blockchain tourists!
Ripple is focused on enabling a global network of financial institutions to use our software to create what we call the Internet of Value.
The revolution of blockchain is not going to happen from outside the system; it's going to happen from within the system.
Whether you talk about Africa or underbanked communities, these are all examples where Ripple can change the way society works.
If the cryptocurrency market overall or a digital asset is solving a problem, it's going to drive some value.
I'm a big fan of what Salesforce has achieved.
People who know me know that I'm a rabid fan of the Kansas Jayhawks. My quirky habit is that every Kansas game is on my calendar, and, more often than not, I will plan and schedule flights around them so that I can engage and watch. I have already brainwashed my family to be Jayhawks fans.
I think any great culture is born out of transparent, authentic communication. You almost can't overcommunicate. You can try, and you might think, 'Oh, do I really have to say this again?' And the answer is yes.
If Ripple as a company went away, XRP would continue to trade. To me, that's the definition of decentralization.
If the asset solves a real problem for a real customer, then there'll be value in the asset.
I had been exposed to bitcoin early. I thought the consumer application of it felt, to me, further away. I thought there would be faster adoption of the blockchain in the enterprise space and with banks.
XRP is solving a payments problem, and it's very efficient to do that.
Yahoo is a great company, and anyone should be proud to be CEO.
A bank-issued digital asset can only really efficiently settle between the banks who issued it. I strongly believe banks need an independent digital asset to enable truly efficient settlement, and we believe XRP is best positioned for that role.
What xRapid allows you to do is to have real-time liquidity.
Governments aren't going to go away; banks aren't going to go away.
I think what Ripple is doing is not just, 'Hey, how do we enable banks' - it's a broader effort in how can you enable an Internet of Things and connected devices that are economic actors to pass a couple pennies.
I think most of the ICOs you're seeing are not real token use cases. They're really securities, so I think the SEC should regulate that.
To be candid, I think, in retrospect, it was a mistake to work at AOL when I did. I think I had rose-colored glasses about the opportunity to reinvent AOL.
'Be in' is all about passion. Life is short. There are so many interesting things we can do in our life, and I feel like if someone is just kind of showing up, it's not worth it for them or for us.
What's happening in crypto - and certainly what's happening at Ripple - we have an opportunity to fundamentally change the way global commerce is managed from a payments point of view.
I don't think central banks are going to give up fiat currency anytime in my lifetime.
Some in the bitcoin community have always taken an anti-government, anti-fiat, anti-bank approach to their philosophy. Ripple takes the orthogonal side of each of those.
Blockchain technologies will change transactions in a broad way.
Some of the people at Ripple I think are truly the smartest people I've ever worked with in my career, which makes it a lot of fun to go to work every day.
There is a lot of volatility in the digital asset market broadly, and certainly that is true in the bitcoin market. It's been true for XRP, and I think that's because these markets are very nascent.
XRP is a digital asset that exists on the XRP ledger, one of the open-source products created by Ripple. XRP is a pivotal component of the Internet of Value, since it solves a key point of friction: the pre-funding of nostro/vostro accounts necessary to facilitate cross border payments.
There are a lot of really fabulous things that get done with digital assets and blockchain technologies to reduce friction, to reduce costs, and enable things that weren't possible before.
PayPal exists because banks are not interoperable: I can't efficiently pay you $10 unless I'm giving you a $10 bill. So we're all on PayPal and Venmo, I need interoperability on the same ledger.
Some of the bitcoin community come from that kind of anarchistic, libertarian view. But, one reason why I think Ripple has been very successful is because we work with the system.
Some of the uses being implemented for blockchain could actually work better with a database.
Family is my fun.
To me, if we're not failing a little bit, we're not trying hard enough. I think great cultures encourage risk and are tolerant of failure. If you don't do that, you're going to end up with a culture that is stagnant and not thinking about the next generation of products and experiences.
We are all products of our experiences, good and bad. Sometimes you learn as much from the negative experiences as you do from the positive.
