Ripple’s Chief Executive, Brad Garlinghouse, Makes Startling Prediction
Ripple Labs — the crypto-centric fintech company that was recently valued at $10 billion — recently released the latest episode of their company show, “The Ripple Drop,” in which the host asked company executives and employees about their industry-related predictions for 2020.
Chief executive of the rapidly growing firm, Brad Garlinghouse, stopped by, giving his thoughts on what 2020 will be like for this budding industry.
Garlinghouse remarked that he thinks that 2020 will be a year of consolidation for the industry, despite 2018 being the bear market:
“I think you’re going to continue to see consolidation. The world doesn’t need 3000+ cryptocurrencies out there, and I think the utility will bear out that there will be a migration to quality if you will.”
While he didn’t give any specific projects he believes are currently unviable (notably, he is a fan of Bitcoin), the chief executive did assert that there is likely to be a massive culling in the cryptocurrency rankings, elaborating in the Youtube show:
“And I think you’ll see consolidation, where there’ll be fewer than 3,000 for sure. We can argue how low that number can go. I’ve said publically that I thought 99% would go away.”
He opined in previous interviews that he thinks that only a small portion of crypto projects currently have a viable product/use case that can work at a large scale, meaning that the digital assets backing these ecosystems are likely to be the only ones that will survive.
From a market perspective, this makes sense. The Block’s Larry Cermak recently noted that according to CoinPaprika data, “95% of cryptocurrencies currently have no liquidity and another 2% very little liquidity… There are currently 351 cryptocurrencies that have less than $10k of combined orders; 94.6% of all cryptocurrencies are currently illiquid.”
Following similar analysis by @woonomic, I looked at the liquidity of cryptocurrencies (using @coinpaprika's data). 95% of cryptocurrencies currently have no liquidity and another 2% very little liquidity. Most of shitcoins won't die by going to 0 but by having no liquidity pic.twitter.com/Efr2LdD93l
— Larry Cermak (@lawmaster) December 23, 2019
Not His Only Prediction
The assertion that a majority of altcoins are on the verge of collapse isn’t Garlinghouse’s only prediction for 2020.
Per previous reports from Ethereum World News, the chief executive was formerly quoted as saying that he believes “half of the top 20 biggest banks in the world will actively hold and trade digital assets in 2020.” This is quite the prediction, especially considering that as far as the public knows, no top-20 banks hold cryptocurrencies, let alone Bitcoin or XRP.
Featured Image from Unsplash