U.S. President Donald Trump’s public bashing of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is no longer news. In a recent tweet on Friday 11th of July, Trump publicly declared that he isn’t a fan of cryptocurrencies, alleging that the unregulated nature of digital assets makes it easy for crypto to facilitate crime and other illicit activity.
In the same breath, he also had something to say about Facebook’s Libra while confirming that only the US dollar should be regarded as proper currency.
Ever since the tweets, more than a few reactions have poured in about Trump’s declaration and what it could possibly mean for the cryptocurrency market. However, in a surprising turn of events, the tweets got some interesting responses from the XRP community. Generally, XRP supporters tried to preach the XRP gospel to Trump, as a Bitcoin alternative.
Why is this an Alternative?
Currently, Ripple’s XRP is still the third largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization and Ripple has been doing everything within his power to push for the massive adoption of XRP through a few of the firm’s services. Ripple currently facilitates settlements for more than a few financial institutions but there’s also something else that might appeal to trump and his administration to at least put it over Bitcoin if it’s to be considered.
Just like most of the other major digital assets, Ripple’s XRP is powered by a decentralized blockchain. However, one major difference is that Ripple controls at least 60% of all the XRP currently in circulation.
Regulation and control are apparently very important to the Trump administration so we could assume that if Trump was to swing towards cryptocurrency, XRP might be a considered option. After all, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Could the Trump Administration Already be Interested in XRP?
In a manner of speaking, China is regarded as the world’s Bitcoin headquarters. Bitmain Technologies, based in Beijing, is responsible for mining more than 50% of all the world’s Bitcoins.
Furthermore, all the different mining firms and pools in China collectively control at least 70% of Bitcoin’s hashrate. Apart from controlling most of the Bitcoin mining in the world, China also manufactures most of the mining equipment used for Bitcoin.
This situation is reportedly disturbing to the White House, which has had the U.S. entangled in a trade war with China for a while. Because of this, the administration is allegedly looking into pushing for more adoption of XRP as a way to tackle China’s dominance in the cryptocurrency sector.
According to Cory Johnson, Ripple Lab’s Former Chief Strategist:
“The White House, in particular, seems to be thinking about what it means to have 80% of Bitcoin mining taking place in China and a majority of Ether mining [also] taking place in China. When you look at XRP, there is no mining. So, from a foreign-control aspect or from an environmental aspect, XRP is a very different beast. And in conversations we’ve had with the administration, they seem to get that and think that might matter.”
It might be safe to assume that if the US administration wants to look into cryptocurrency, the very design of XRP might be a good way to start. Apart from the fact that there’s something to be said for Ripple’s payment systems helping cross-border transactions, Bitcoin is a lot more decentralized than XRP. So if for some reason XRP still doesn’t cut it for the government, we can be sure that Bitcoin definitely wouldn’t.