Bitcoin, Ethereum weren’t built for payments: Ripple’s Asheesh Birla

Ripple’s SVP of Products, Asheesh Birla, was the latest guest on a recent interview with Seeking Alpha, an interview during which he reiterated Ripple’s take on improving the global financial system. He said,

“Our strategy from the beginning has been to improve the existing financial system rather than fight against it — working with regulators, governments, and central banks to change the system from within.”

Birla attributed this will to work with the existing financial system as the main factor behind Ripple’s partnership with over 200 banks in 40+ countries. He also highlighted that RippleNet is laying the foundation for cross-border payments with On-Demand Liquidity (ODL), which is “actively replacing the slow, expensive and outdated payments infrastructure that exists today to address global demand for more efficient cross-border transactions.”

Additionally, Birla claimed that Bitcoin and Ethereum weren’t built for payments, but rather, were built for store of value and for executing smart contracts. He backed this claim by highlighting Bitcoin’s slower transaction times and its core system that gets slower as it scales. He added,

“XRP, on the other hand, can scale up to the same transaction volume as Visa (NYSE:V), which is why it was the best digital asset for Ripple to build its products around.”

The entrepreneur also stressed that the XRP token, while it holds proven utility and liquidity around the world, is not out to replace fiat currency. Speaking about some of the latest developments, Birla claimed that the MoneyGram partnership will enable RippleNet to dramatically expand its network into several high friction payment destinations where remittances flows are high and pain points of cross-border payments are felt by end users and financial institutions alike.