Ripple’s Brad Garlinghouse breaks down patent filed by Bank of America and Facebook Libra’s effect

Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, has been very vocal about his views on the Libra’s Senate hearing where David Marcus was grilled by lawmakers from all across the U.S. He has also expressed his views on David Marcus’s comments on Western Union and how it was a call-to-action for banks.

In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Brad Garlinghouse addressed the Bank of America’s non-utility patent. Garlinghouse, treading lightly on the matter, stated,

“I can neither confirm nor kill it… We are known to widely work with banks around the world and certainly, some of the largest banks around the world are our customers; we will continue working with banks. I too was surprised by it.”

The patent, which does not mention XRP, managed to get the spirits of XRP enthusiasts up. The non-utility patent states,

“[A] need for a flexible and cost effective accounting treatment and system for implementing the same are needed.”

Touching on the topic of Libra and its effect on Ripple, Garlinghouse stated that regulations for both financial institutions and the government of the United States mattered. Libra’s hearings were a stepping stone and a huge deal for the cryptospace. However, this will also lead to legitimate businesses and startups taking advantage of crypto and building something useful getting caught in the crossfire, Garlinghouse said. He added,

“Even the president came out and tweeted ‘I don’t like cryptocurrencies’. Well, that is a lot like saying it to the internet companies in 1997.”

Garlinghouse also said that Libra’s approach was an antithesis to Ripple’s approach, considering the plethora of banks, financial institutions, and regulators that it presently works with.

When the Libra whitepaper was announced on June 18, there was a lot of hype and speculation around it. Some concluded that it would be competing with Bitcoin, while others said that it would put Ripple out of business. Addressing the above-mentioned tidbits, Garlinghouse said,

“Facebook is a consumer company, and when they think about the problem that they are solving it includes a lot of problems faced by consumers. What Ripple is doing is at the institutional level, connecting banks, and if anything, we’ve had the best weeks in the history, during the week that Libra was announced. It is a call-to-action for banks.”