Liquidity Hub (LH), Ripple Labs’ new product, has caused a huge uproar within the XRP community. As Bitcoinist reported yesterday, the community was outraged that XRP is not part of the product, while Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin are used to provide businesses with a seamless way to manage their crypto liquidity needs.
The outcry has prompted Ripple’s chief legal officer (CLO) to speak out on the issue. In a Twitter thread, Stuart Alderoty clarified that XRP may become part of the product later. He also set the record straight on the distinction between LH and the XRP based product On-Demand Liquidity (ODL).
Ripple Assures ODL Will Continue To Thrive
Alderoty wrote that Liquidity Hub is an institutional enterprise product that is not designed for retail. In addition, he drew attention to the key problem with XRP: “In the US there is little liquidity for XRP. We’re keen to support XRP in LH when we can provide a good customer experience,” the Ripple CLO further explained.
Clearly, Alderoty is alluding to the legal battle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which is the primary reason for XRP’s non-existent liquidity in the US market after all exchanges and market makers in the country dropped XRP. On the other hand, the statement implies that Ripple could add the XRP token to Liquidity Hub if there is enough liquidity in the US market – following the end of the legal battle.
In this sense, Ripple’s Chief Legal Officer added: “Also, as previously stated in our blog post – XRP does not have regulatory clarity in the US, which is, of course, important to enterprise customers.”
He also made it clear that Liquidity is a crypto-based product that offers a wider range of digital assets: “Our product team has been very clear – LH was built to access all kinds of crypto liquidity, not just XRP. Our target LH customers – today mainly institutions in the US – want access to a variety of tokens like BTC, ETH, and stablecoins. We’re here to serve customer demands.”
Last but not least, Alderoty also assured that the XRP based product ODL will continue to be in the focus of the company:
For those comparing ODL and LH – ODL has for years used (and will continue to use) XRP. Our sales of XRP (reported every Q) are all to ODL customers for use in the product which is thriving globally!
Notably, Neil Hartner, a software developer at Ripple for ODL also clarified yesterday that Liquidity Hub has another key difference from ODL: licensing requirements. With ODL, payments are handled between the sender and the receiver, and Ripple is not a counterparty. With LH, Ripple is in the middle.
At press time, the XRP price stood at $0.5162, consolidating in the range between $0.4939 and $0.5317 (4-hour chart).
Featured image from Financial Times, chart from TradingView.com
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