Users question XRP's decentralized nature

Ripple’s Brad Garlinghouse has asked Bitcoin and other blockchain technologies to set their differences aside and work together to move the industry forward as they grow more popular. This statement follows  Ripple’s gift of the skull of Satoshi to the Bitcoin community.

Garlinghouse said, “I hope this gesture continues to remind folks that we (BTC, XRP, and other crypto communities) have more in common than we think.”

Special guest at Bitcoin 2025 – the Skull of Satoshi, donated by @Ripple to the Bitcoin community. The Skull will now have a permanent home at the Bitcoin Museum in Nashville. pic.twitter.com/Eo3kNqRvGp

— The Bitcoin Conference (@TheBitcoinConf) May 28, 2025

For a long time, Garlinghouse has viewed XRP as a competitor of Bitcoin. His excuse for not overtaking BTC was the SEC case, especially under Biden’s administration. Early this year, he was against the SBR, citing that other crypto coins should also be considered. 

He said, “Maximalism remains the enemy of crypto progress, and I’m very glad to see fewer and fewer folks ascribe to this outdated and misinformed thinking.”  Luckily for him, Trump has considered XRP a digital stockpile. 

However, BTC is at the very front with a market cap of over $2 trillion, while XRP is at the fourth position with a market cap of over $130 billion. Garlinghous asserts he owns the three big crypto assets, including Bitcoin. 

Meanwhile, the BTC conference has quickly become one of the year’s defining events for the crypto industry. It hosted over 30,000 attendees, 300 exhibitors, and a packed lineup of speakers.

Garlinghouse calls for attention to blockchain energy usage

Garlinghouse said, “The Skull of Satoshi was originally built to call attention to blockchain energy usage, and today it’s a symbol and reminder of Bitcoin’s incredible staying power to many around the world (including me!).”

The statement sounds sarcastic because, in recent years, Bitcoin has used around 57.09 billion kWh per year. This is comparable to electricity usage in countries like Argentina or the Netherlands. On the other hand, XRP uses 474,000 kWh, a fraction of the energy used by Bitcoin.

Compared to Bitcoin, XRP’s energy consumption is 100,000 times smaller than Bitcoin’s per transaction.

Meanwhile, BTQ and Quandela have agreed to look into how photonic quantum computing can be used for BTQ’s Quantum Sampling Proof-of-Work (QSPoW). It is an alternative to Bitcoin’s standard safe mining model that uses less energy.

Users question XRP’s decentralized nature

The public nature of the payments firm has raised an interlinked question of Ripple’s centralized leadership and XRP’s supposed decentralized model.  A user asked on X why Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse is the face of XRP, given XRP’s claim to being a decentralized crypto asset. “I don’t see the same arrangement with BTC,” they said.

Chief Technology Officer of Ripple, David Schwartz, jumped in right away to calm people down and give a full explanation. Schwartz brought up the fact that Garlinghouse is the CEO of the company Ripple. But “XRP has no issuer,” adding that all XRP tokens were made when the XRP Ledger first came out.

The CTO of the payments company also talked about decentralization, which is one of the most important ideas in the crypto world. Schwartz also said that people worried about XRP Ledger’s decentralized model should focus less on meanings and more on what they want from decentralization.

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