The chief executive of payments platform Ripple says that it would “make sense” if exchange-traded funds (ETF) centered around and other digital assets were created.
In a new interview with Bloomberg, Ripple Labs CEO Brad Garlinghouse predicts that a new wave of crypto investment products will appear in the future.
“I think it makes sense that there will be other ETFs. It’s sort of like the earliest days of the stock market – you don’t really want exposure to one stock, or one company, you want to typically think about diversifying risk and what have you. I think we will see other [crypto] ETFs.
When we will see them is hard to predict. The sad reality of what we saw with the Bitcoin ETF is [it happened] only because the courts forced the SEC’s hand, and really [SEC Chair] Gary Gensler’s hand.”
According to Garlinghouse, Ripple’s years-long battle with the SEC, which culminated in a favorable ruling for the payments platforms last year, hurt the valuation of XRP. The SEC first sued Ripple Labs in December 2020 for allegedly selling XRP as an unregistered security.
However, a court later ruled that XRP does not qualify as a security which would fall under the jurisdiction of the SEC.
Says Garlinghouse,
“Before the SEC lawsuit, XRP was the second-most valuable digital asset. Because of the headwinds of that lawsuit, we’ve now seen that largely abate. But the long-term view on these things is about how you create utility and solve real-world problems with these different digital assets.
Bitcoin’s doing that very well as a store of value. XRP and its dynamics are about being very fast, very efficient, [and] low cost on a per transaction basis [and that] makes it ideal for payments and that’s where RIpple has leaned into as a company.”
XRP is trading for $0.54 at time of writing.
