Ripple Vs. SWIFT Battle Heating Up As Exec Lands Major Blow To XRP

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Ripple and SWIFT’s battle for dominance is heating up, with an executive at the latter taking a dig at XRP, the bridge currency for the crypto firm’s payment service. The executive also explained why businesses are unlikely to trust Ripple despite the conclusion of the SEC lawsuit. 

SWIFT Executive Makes Criticism Against Ripple and XRP

SWIFT Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) Tom Zschach said on LinkedIn that surviving lawsuits isn’t resilience, in response to a post that praised Ripple and XRP for battling through the SEC lawsuit. The executive claimed that neutral and shared governance is what resilience is about and that institutions won’t want to live on a competitor’s rail. 

With his comment, Zschach again raised the issue of centralization in the XRP ecosystem. The XRP Ledger and its native token have been largely criticized as being majorly dominated by Ripple, although the crypto firm has denied this. With his statement, the SWIFT CIO also suggested that most institutions won’t want to use the XRP Ledger or XRP since Ripple is a direct competitor to them. 

Notably, Ripple has applied for a national banking license, which, if approved, would put it in the same league as banks that the crypto firm aims to onboard onto its payment rail. This is unlike SWIFT, whose operation is simply to serve these banks and doesn’t operate as a competition to them. However, Ripple’s payment solutions utilize blockchain technology, which is faster, giving it an edge over SWIFT. 

Interestingly, Zschach’s comment comes at a time when Ripple executives are being criticized for dumping XRP, with crypto pundit Bitlord threatening to take action against the crypto firm if they don’t stop selling their holdings. 

The crypto pundit opined that the crypto firm may be selling their holdings because they are unprofitable and are facing too much competition. Bitlord also opined that governments won’t adopt Ripple’s technology and that banks will choose to launch their payment rails instead of using the crypto firm’s.

Ripple Is Going About Compliance The Wrong Way

The SWIFT CIO also responded to the praise about how Ripple has been vocal about prioritizing compliance by working hand-in-hand with regulators. Zschach said that compliance isn’t about one company convincing regulators that it should be allowed to operate. Instead, he said that it is about an entire industry agreeing on shared standards that no single balance sheet controls. 

It is worth mentioning that XRP Scan data shows that the top seven XRP holders are Ripple escrow accounts. These wallet addresses alone collectively hold about 32% of the token’s total supply. This explains why the XRP Ledger continues to be criticized for not being as decentralized as other blockchain networks. On-chain sleuth ZachXBT recently described XRP holders as “exit liquidity” for insiders.

Featured image from Getty Images, chart from Tradingview.com

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