Ripple’s chief technology officer (CTO), David Schwartz, took to Twitter to outline the obstacles XRP faces in order to gain mainstream adoption.
In a series of tweets published on October 28, Schwartz responded to questions posed by the Ripple community over the development of XRP moving forward. Schwartz, who is one of the original architects for the XRP Ledger, highlighted the primary obstacles for XRP in order to achieve broader adoption by banks and financial services companies.
According to Schwartz, XRP is being held back by “regulatory uncertainty”, “last mile problems”, and fear of backlash from existing banking partners.
I think there are a combination of obstacles. Regulatory uncertainty, last mile problems, fear of reprisals from existing partners, and so on. Another big thing is that the very best customers are ones that are going to use bridge assets to build new products. 1/2
— David Schwartz (@JoelKatz) October 28, 2020
Schwartz acknowledged that XRP is a relatively new product for the financial system and that adoption would require time for “heavily motivated” partners to push the benefits of XRP onto their customers.
He cautioned that adoption for XRP would be “slow to get momentum.”
They're heavily motivated to see projects to completion and will push the benefits all the way down to customers. But in that case, even when they're 100% ready to go, they still have 0 customers because the product is new. So it's slow to get momentum. 2/2
— David Schwartz (@JoelKatz) October 28, 2020
The Ripple executive also commented on J.P. Morgan’s launch of the JPMCoin saying its use would be limited to customers familiar with the bank.
JPMCoin will only be useful for people who trust JPM, are in a jurisdiction that's compatible with JPM, and aren't concerned about their sovereignty. A system nobody can own and control is, IMO, better — especially if you compete with JPM, or hope to.
— David Schwartz (@JoelKatz) October 28, 2020