Ripple CTO David Schwartz pushed back against accusations of trying to undermine the two biggest cryptocurrencies
David Schwartz, Ripple’s chief technology officer, said that the U.S. government banning Bitcoin would be “disastrous” for Ripple in a recent tweet. The same applies to the Ethereum cryptocurrency potentially being classified as an unregistered security.
Schwartz’s tweet came in response to a thread posted by Castle Island Ventures’ Nic Carter, in which he accused the San Francisco-based blockchain company of actively trying to undermine the two biggest cryptocurrencies.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has a history of inaccurately portraying Bitcoin energy usage. Last April, he stated that XRP was 100,000 times more efficient than the largest cryptocurrency. After facing pushback from the community, the Ripple boss clarified that he wasn’t advocating for banning Bitcoin.
Former Ripple CEO Chris Larsen has taken a much more aggressive stance when it comes to Bitcoin. Last September, he urged regulators to punish Bitcoin miners, saying the flagship cryptocurrency needed to follow Ethereum’s suit by moving to proof-of-stake. In December, he described how major US mining companies could benefit from the extremely unlikely code change in a blog post that was widely ridiculed within the cryptocurrency community.
Schwartz himself has been highly critical of the proof-of-work algorithm, describing it as “a technological dead end.” He also argued that Bitcoin was not sufficiently decentralized, which makes it vulnerable to a 51% attack.
On the regulatory side, Bitcoin and Ethereum became the targets of Ripple’s lawyers after the company was sued by the United States for unregistered XRP sales by the Securities and Exchange Commission last December.
Garlinghouse himself claimed that Ether was able to overtake XRP because of unfair treatment.
Ripple believes that resolving the closely watched case can bring regulatory clarity.
