Brad Garlinghouse Compares Bitcoin ETF Trajectory to Gold – Talks Election Donations Made by Ripple
Brad Garlinghouse has commented on Ripple's election spending. Photo By Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile for Collision via Getty Images.
Key Takeaways
- Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has compared the trajectory of Bitcoin and gold ETFs.
- Bitcoin ETFs have already grown to a size that took gold funds years to achieve.
- Ripple recently donated $25 million to the pro-crypto Super PAC Fairshake.
Roughly two decades after the first gold-backed Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) launched on US securities exchanges, Bitcoin ETFs made a similar splash with their debut in January.
But as Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse recently observed, Bitcoin ETF inflows have dramatically outpaced investment in Gold funds in 2004.
Bitcoin ETFs Outpace Gold
After State Street listed the SPDR Gold Shares ETF on the New York Stock Exchange in 2004, it took three years to amass $10 billion worth of assets.
In contrast, BlackRock’s IBIT Bitcoin ETF has accumulated assets worth more than $20 billion in just 5 months.
“It took 2 months for [Bitcoin ETFs] to reach what took Gold ETFs over a year,” Garlinghouse stressed. From this, he deduced that the interest in crypto ETFs is “very high” and that the next wave of expected Ethereum ETFs will do “very well” too.
Looking forward, he predicted that funds holding XRP and other cryptocurrencies would soon follow.
Diversifying Crypto Investments
“People don’t want just exposure to one commodity,” Garlinghouse observed. “So if you have exposure to gold, you might want exposure to silver […] so to me, it only makes sense that you don’t want to have just a single-threaded asset exposure.”
Of course, once the first precious metals ETFs hit the market, it wasn’t long before fund managers started to offer mixed-asset vehicles, granting investors exposure to multiple commodities in a single wrapper.
If crypto ETFs follow the same trajectory, equivalent mixed funds would be the logical conclusion of Garlinghouse’s line of thinking.
As for the chances of an XRP ETF being approved anytime soon, he remains optimistic that the concept could take flight as early as next year, despite political challenges.
Crypto Becoming an Election Issue Good for the Industry
Commenting on the problems the American crypto industry has faced in recent years, Garlinghouse said “it’s frustrating that we have to go through the courts to get those positive outcomes.”
However, he welcomed that fact that politicians are paying more attention to the issue in the run-up to November’s elections.
“I think it’s becoming an election issue, which I think is good for the industry, and thus I think it’s driving some momentum in the market,” he observed.
Donald Trump’s Crypto Embrace “Incredibly Strategic”
Commenting on the role of crypto in American politics, Garlinghouse expressed his view that Republicans have taken the lead on the issue.
“We haven’t yet seen the Biden administration follow up with actions,” he observed. However, “you have seen Trump make this part of his campaign,” a move he called “incredibly smart [and] incredibly strategic.”
“I think it’s crazy that it ever became a partisan issue,” he added.
To help fund the burgeoning crypto lobby, Ripple recently donated $25 million to Fairshake, a Super PAC that supports pro-crypto candidates in both main parties.
Alongside its sister organizations Defend American Jobs and Protect Progress, Fairshake has directed millions of dollars toward the campaigns of 11 Democrats and 12 Republicans so far.
