Brad Garlinghouse – Chief Executive Officer of Ripple – believes that maximalism towards bitcoin and other digital assets is not healthy for the cryptocurrency industry. Nonetheless, he admitted owning BTC and ETH.
The “tribalism” around Bitcoin is bad for the sector
Being an industry leader and the largest digital asset by market capitalization has earned BTC countless individual fans over the years, while well-known companies and even one country (El Salvador) have adopted the asset as official payment method.
However, putting bitcoin on a pedestal and creating a “tribalism” around it could hold back the entire nearly $2 trillion crypto market. That is what Ripple’s CEO – Brad Garlinghouse – argued in a recent interview.
“Polarization is not healthy in my view,” he argued.
Examples of people who believe only in bitcoin’s merits and reject any other crypto assets are the head of MicroStrategy – Michael Saylor, and Block’s Jack Dorsey. Sometimes, the former’s stance on BTC reaches the state of religion. “Money is something to live with. Bitcoin is something to live for,” he stated last month.
Garlinghouse thinks such maximalism is overkill and investors should diversify and trust more assets because “all boats can rise”. On the other hand, he admitted to owning bitcoin and ether:
“I own bitcoin, I own ether, I own some others. I am an absolute believer that this industry is going to continue to thrive.”
The Ripple CEO, who was previously an executive at Yahoo, compared today’s digital asset industry to the dot-com era of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Garlinghouse Is Against Dogecoin
Despite urging investors to explore more digital assets, Ripple’s boss does not support all of them. One token that he believes is harmful to the crypto industry is Dogecoin (DOGE).
Several months ago, referring to the financial turmoil, he claimed that the inflationary nature of memecoin did not classify it as an inflation hedge:
“I’m actually not convinced, somewhat controversially, I guess, that Dogecoin is good for the crypto market. Dogecoin has some inflationary dynamics itself that would make me reluctant to hold it.”
Unlike other digital assets like Bitcoin, Dogecoin does not have a maximum supply cap. In fact, around 14 million DOGE are mined every day. This has been a catalyst for many pundits to believe that the essence of the token is similar to fiat currencies which are printed in colossal amounts by central banks.
