In a recent interview with Fortune’s Balancing the Ledger, Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, said that if he was a betting man, he would bet on Libra not launching by the end of 2022.
Regulatory concerns seem to be too big and will keep Facebook from launching Libra, according to Garlinghouse. In fact, the CEO explicitly said that Facebook might not be able to launch Libra, ever.
This is a big shift from its original thoughts on Libra when it first was announced. The CEO of Ripple was really bullish on Libra at first and according to Fortune, he even sent Libra’s creator a bottle of champagne.
Garlinghouse also explained that Libra might have done better if it had not been launched by Facebook, a company that is in the crosshairs of a lot of governments.
Unfortunately for Libra, U.S. is not the only country preventing them from launching as recently the European Union announced the introduction of new legislation aimed specifically at preventing Libra from ‘undermining’ Europe’s currency.
Facebook itself warned investors that Libra may never launch due to regulations and that there cannot be an assurance that Libra will be made available in a timely manner or at all.
The team behind Libra also stated that they do not have enough familiarity with the blockchain technology, something that could certainly impact its ability to conduct a successful launch.
Ripple has dealt with regulations too and even published an open letter to the United States asking the government to not ‘paint them with a broad brush’ as well as urging lawmakers to recognize the fundamental differences between companies using the blockchain technology.
Ripple has received a ton of criticism since the beginning for not being completely decentralized. BitMEX, cryptocurrency exchange and derivative trading platform, unleashed a hard critique of XRP where it states that the network of XRP will remain ‘’unstable and the trust networks are unlikely to be regarded as reliable’’
