Why Ripple (XRP) is good for crypto market even if you don’t like them for ideological reasons
It is not a secret that most of the hardcore cypherpunks and bitcoin maximalists are fierce objectors to pretty much everything that is connected with Ripple and XRP. It starts with the simplest confusion and disagreement on the name of the currency (is it Ripple or just XRP) to the accusations it is a centralized, corporate coin that doesn’t deserve to be called cryptocurrency.
However, if we put those allegations and accusations aside, especially the ones about centralization make little sense since pretty much all of the market is nominally decentralized but essentially centralized. Even Bitcoin, the spearhead of the cryptocurrency is under a constant danger of 51% attack if couple of bigger mining pools decide to collude. Iota can’t function without a centralized coordinator, NEO has 7 masternodes that are controlled by only couple of entities etc.
Yesterday, the news broke that Ripple formed a lobbying body that will promote cryptocurrency interests in Washington DC. According to Coindesk, Ripple is leading a number of organizations launching a lobbying group. Dubbed Securing America’s Internet of Value Coalition (SAIV), the group includes, apart from Ripple, the RippleWorks Foundation; Coil, a company developing a solution for digital payments; Hard Yaka, an investment firm focusing on digital assets; and PolySign, a company seeking to be a crypto custodian.
Most of the participants have links to Ripple; for example, Coil was founded by the former CTO at Ripple Stefan Thomas and Hard Yaka has been working on a prepaid card allowing users to spend Ripple balances in real time.
It is very popular among the naive portion of the crypto community to be completely anti-regulations, crypto anarchy rules and all that stuff. That sounds very appealing and you probably come off as very cool to your like-minded peers, however, that is surely a path to nowhere. How gullible you need to be to think that the old guys who designed and run this world’s system of order will simply let some fringe insurgent group to build a parallel system to theirs and render them obsolete?
And that is where Ripple enters the picture and that is where Ripple contributes to the common cause of cryptocurrencies. Their company is lead by high-level executives that know the ins and outs of this machine that runs the world and they know how to play by the rules and get what you want. Every country, company or any other entity has its lobbyists that are in the ears of the decision makers in the strongest country of the world. Ripple execs know that and work on implementing the same thing for crypto.
So, the message to the romantic rebels out there is: when WWII broke out, the bigger threat needed to be removed so the usual, arch-adversaries like Russia were a welcome ally. Once the common cause of defeating fascism and Nazism was successfully wrapped up, we could go back to be “the enemies” with different viewpoints.
Whoever advances the common cause of crypto movement in “fighting the external adversary” is welcome. Once we reach the common goal, we can go back to sorting out our internal differences and give each other moral lectures.
