Bitcoin Global News (BGN)
October 03, 2018 -- ADVFN Crypto NewsWire -- Bill Clinton ringed in
the Swell Conference for Ripple this Monday, with a speech that
was, at first, relatively underwhelming. According to Coindesk’s
report on it, Clinton actually said almost nothing about Blockchain
technology.
Even so, the fact that Clinton took
the stage for Ripple, on the heels of other former government
officials like Ben Bernanke, who did so last year, means
something.
As Coindesk has suggested, Ripple
is making no secret that it stands for and with establishment,
contrary to what Satoshi originally rolled out the Bitcoin network
for. In effect, this also means that Ripple is appearing more and
more centralized.
If we take the debate of
centralization versus decentralization in its simplest form, a
centralized company actually possesses the data of its customers,
while its customers do not actually possess that data. The best
possible example of how this works out is in the debate between
traditional banks and Crypto networks.
A customer may have an
account with a traditional bank and they may feel that they own
that money, but in truth, it can be argued that it is the bank who
owns that money. The easiest way to understand this is to look at
central banks, where traditional currencies come from.
All banks can theoretically create
as much money as they can because of loans. When a bank issues a
loan, it has made an IOU with a certain party, knowing that all of
the money will come back to the bank, with interest. These loans
are usually approved and protected by the central banks. In effect,
because of all of this, once this happens the bank has just raised
its funds, with little risk to its current lines of
business.
In the interest of not going too
far down the rabbit hole, we will pause the analysis of traditional
banking here. Furthermore, the point has already been made. All of
this appears to be completely true about the traditional banking
space, while with Crypto networks in their purest form, each and
every user owns his or her funds completely and the only risk is
that their wallets can be hacked, just like any other digital
item.
At this juncture, it would be easy
to wonder: how does any of this connect with Ripple and their
previously mentioned conference?
The answer is quite simple and yet
surrounded by a decent level of uncertainty at the same time.
Coindesk has argued that essentially, since Ripple is happy to
consistently pay top dollar for former government officials to
speak, then it is strongly possible that they are not trying to be
a Cryptocurrency firm, in truth.
Another way of thinking about this
is to use comparison of Ripple to the theory of Schrodinger’s Cat.
We will not really know what the company is trying to become until
it publicly makes this clear. As of now, it could be a plain
vanilla Crypto firm, just looking for its primary use case that
will truly help its main product take off.
On the other hand, Ripple could be
shooting to be a financial technology firm, in the hopes that doing
so would help it avoid the brunt of any upcoming regulations that
might be designed to slow Blockchain innovation. Another reason
this might be true is that it is just trying to re-brand itself to
be more attractive to the traditional finance industry and the
government, which see the word “Crypto,” as a sign to stay
away.
Whatever the case, it appears that
we will not know the answer until the theoretical box is
opened.
By: BGN Editorial Staff
News:
Ripple
(XRP)