Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse on JPM Coin: “I Don’t Understand What Problem [It] Solves”

JPMorgan Chase’s JPM Coin has attracted a lot of attention as something of a competitor to Ripple and XRP, and for what is a complete 180 on their stance on cryptocurrencies, after CEO Jamie Dimon once called Bitcoin “a scam.”

Now Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has a thing or two to say about JPM Coin and, unsurprisingly, it isn’t complimentary — though he did offer a small bit of praise on the launch of the stablecoin.

Garlinghouse was speaking at the Chamber of Digital Commerce’s D.C. Blockchain Summit in Washington, and the limited praise he had for JPM Coin is because he’s glad to see established institutions considering digital assets.

However, on other occasions, Garlinghouse has been dismissive of JPM Coin and skeptical of whether banks and other entities would utilize JPMorgan’s token. Ripple has been quite successful on this front and has already roped several financial institutions onto its RippleNet.

At a conference earlier this week, he said:

This guy from Morgan Stanley was interviewing me, I said ‘So, is Morgan Stanley going to use the JPM Coin?’ And he said ‘probably not.’ So, well is Citi going to use the JPM Coin? Is BBVA? Is PNC? And the answer is no.

The Ripple CEO questioned the utility of the stablecoin when the transactions would focus on JPMorgan’s books alone. There is no need to tokenize fiat currency, unless JPM Coin manages to bring together different entities — but this is something it’s not intended to do and Ripple has done much better at this so far.

As Garlinghouse put it:

If you give them a dollar for deposits, they’ll give you a JPM Coin that you can then move within the JPM ledger. Wait a minute, just use the dollar! I don’t understand. If you’re just moving within the JPM ledger, and it has to be dollar-to-dollar, one-to-one backing, I don’t understand what problem that solves.

Garlinghouse also said that JPM Coin is like launching AOL after Netscape’s IPO.