Ripple CEO Is Happy, Not Scared in Light of Facebook’s Crypto Libra Announcements

Earlier this month BitcoinExchangeGuide reported a story of Max Keiser saying “FaceCoin obviates the need for hundreds of alt-cons including XRP. The alt-coin apocalypse is nigh.” He is not the only one, many analysts think the same.

One person who would should have been scared about this prophecy would have been Ripple CEO, Brad Garlinghouse. However, he seems to be elated by Facebook’s venture into this space. He thinks that the Libra project is a sign that we have to leave inefficient global remittance services like Western Union and SWIFT.

Garlinghouse went on to say MoneyGram was a very big deal for Ripple and an even bigger deal for crypto markets overall.

Libra attempts to be a transaction method across Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook and other Facebook’s partners such as Uber and MasterCard. They claim sending Libra money is going to be as easy as sending a photo. With that, they’re combining the idea of Bitcoin with Venmo, PayPal and Instagram to create a one-stop-shop for all your daily activity.

Libra is a permissioned blockchain and uses a consensus model comparable to cryptographic payment networks such as Ripple and Stellar. Transactions are not entirely free on Libra. They each incur a tiny fractional cost of the transaction value to pay for Ethereum-style “gas” that covers the cost of processing the transfer of funds.

Garlinghouse went on to thank David Marcus, the Head of Calibra:

“I will also say that I'm going to send a case of champagne to David Marcus, the guy who runs Libra. The Reason is [that] this week will be the best week of signed contracts at Ripple ever. It's been a massive call to action… I think the banks realized that if Facebook is going to be a competitor in this space, they can't depend on a technology like SWIFT to compete in the marketplace.”