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Despite a largely bullish court ruling in favor of Ripple last month, Morgan Creek founder Mark Yusko is no more enthusiastic about the company, nor the XRP ledger.
In a Tuesday interview, the investors said that the ledger is not only “corruptible,” but that it lacks any “real adoption.”
Yusko’s View On Ripple
In conversation with Darren Moore Jr, Yusko said that he “struggles” with the XRP ledger at large.
While remaining open to the idea that it could serve as a payment rail for banks and brokerage firms, he sees little evidence that it’s actually gaining traction. “There are lots of announcements with very little behind it,” said Yusko.
Launched in June of 2012, the XRP Ledger was designed as a public blockchain that would provide cheaper, faster, and less energy-intensive transactions than Bitcoin. XRP soared to prominence in late 2017, reaching an all-time high of $3.30, which it hasn’t approached since.
XRP received a major boost last month, however, after New York Judge Analisa Torres delivered summary judgment in Ripple’s lawsuit with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The judge agreed with the SEC’s allegation that Ripple’s initial allocation of XRP to institutional clients was a securities offering but denied that other XRP transactions were securities sales.
XRP Concentration
Yusko agreed with the judge on both counts. “I hate the way they issued it, and so does the SEC,” he noted, while also criticizing the relatively centralized concentration of XRP with a few select holders.“In my mind, it’s still corruptible.”
Data from CoinCarp shows that XRP’s top 100 addresses own 33% of its total supply. Only about 52% of the XRP supply is circulating in the market.
“I don’t see any real major adoption that anyone’s pointing to the same way that people can point to Ethereum (ETH), or even Solana (SOL) as had some big design wins,” he added.
If asked to rank cryptocurrencies, Yusko said XRP would be among a handful of coins competing in the “number three stack”, along with Dash and Monero (XRM). “To me, Bitcoin is the king, Ethereum is the crown prince,” he said.
Yusko noted, however, that Bitcoin isn’t widely held enough to be adopted easily as a medium of exchange. “Anything that allows us to get broad distribution of digital assets… would be better,” he said.
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