The New York Times has long been viewed as the newspaper of record in the United States. A reporter at the publication, Nathaniel Popper, recently cited a scathing article about Ripple by the Financial Times, titled “With $16bn in cryptocurrency, Ripple attempts a reset”. Popper delved into the relationship between Ripple and one of its major cross-border payments partner, Santander bank. He claimed that the bank is still wary about using Ripple’s XRP digital currency.
Responding to Popper, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has made it clear that the company is not looking to reset its strategy.
Ripple Is Resetting Its Strategy To Become The Amazon Of Crypto
In the August 12 article by FT’s west coast editor Richard Waters, the journalist posited that XRP has failed to gain popularity amongst banks as an alternative payment system. He cites Santander bank which has been hesitant to use the XRP currency in its global payment network, despite using Ripple’s software. The bank has argued that XRP is currently not being traded in sufficient markets to be able to support its banking needs.
Additionally, MoneyGram receives a significant amount of money from Ripple to use XRP for its payments.
This approach by Ripple has not been received well by most people. Popper, for instance, accused Brad Garlinghouse of misleading investors with promises that multiple banks would be utilizing XRP in the near future. According to him, investors who were swayed by Garlinghouse’s words and invested in the cryptocurrency have now lost circa 90 percent of their initial investment.
“If investors put their money into XRP on the day Brad Garlinghouse talked about the banks planning to use XRP — and held it to today — they would have lost around 90% of their investment.”
Popper went on to say that Ripple is now looking to change its strategy and become the Amazon of crypto since its XRP-based payments network has failed to catch on among banks.
XRP Is Already Solving A $10 Trillion Problem, No Strategy Reset Necessary: Garlinghouse
In response to the criticism by the New York Times journalist Popper, Brad Garlinghouse defended the firm’s current business model in a series of tweets on August 14. Garlinghouse maintained that using XRP cryptocurrency to solve the $10 trillion cross-border payments problem is already working.
The Ripple boss then shared data regarding the On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) solution which leverages XRP cryptocurrency. Since its launch, the ODL has accounted for over $2 billion in transactions.
Moreover, its volume has grown 11 times on a year-over-year basis. He also points out the more than a dozen customers including MoneyGram, goLance, FlashFX, Azimo that are already using the On-Demand Liquidity service.
In conclusion, Garlinghouse also called attention to the fact that Popper had gotten his Twitter handle wrong.
“P.S. @nathanielpopper, for future reference — quick fact check and in keeping with NYT standards — my Twitter handle is @bgarlinghouse, not @bradgarlinghouse.”
