According to the CEO of blockchain firm Ripple, “tribalism” around bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is dragging back the entire $2 trillion sector.

“Polarization isn’t healthy in my judgement,” Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said in a CNBC-hosted fireside chat at Paris Blockchain Week Summit last week.

“I own bitcoin, I own ether, I own some others. I am an absolute believer that this industry is going to continue to thrive.”

“All boats can rise,” Garlinghouse added.

Former Yahoo executive Garlinghouse compared today’s crypto business to the dotcom period of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

“Yahoo could be successful and so could eBay … They’re solving different problems,” he said. “There’s different use cases and different audiences and different markets. I think a lot of those parallels exist today.”

According to CoinGecko data, there are currently tens of thousands of cryptocurrencies in circulation, valued a total of $2 trillion.

Some digital coins have developed a devoted following, most notably bitcoin, whose hardcore supporters are known as “maximalists.”

The so-called maximalists, who favour just bitcoin and not other cryptocurrencies, include Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor.

According to Garlinghouse, the crypto industry’s maximalism has resulted in “fractured representation” when it comes to lobbying US lawmakers.

President Joe Biden signed an executive order last month directing the federal government to investigate the risks and benefits of cryptocurrencies.

“The lack of coordination in Washington, D.C., amongst the crypto industry, I find to be shocking,” he said.

Ripple is frequently associated with XRP, a cryptocurrency that the company employs for cross-border transactions.

The business controls the bulk of the 100 billion XRP tokens in circulation, which it releases from an escrow account on a regular basis to maintain price stability.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has accused Ripple of fraudulently selling more than $1 billion in XRP in an unregistered securities offering. XRP, according to the business, should be classified as a virtual currency rather than a securities.

(Adapted from CNBC.com)

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