Ripple chief executive officer Brad Garlinghouse says institutional investor interest in cryptocurrency is “skyrocketing,” owing to the improvement in real-world utility. 

In a series of tweets published last week, Garlinghouse pointed to the rising interest in bitcoin and crypto-assets from institutions. Garlinghouse, whose company Ripple helped launch the XRP token, called BTC a store of value asset and “extremely useful inflation hedge.”

He also took the opportunity to promote XRP’s fast, low-cost transactions as a scalable platform for payments.

Garlinghouse linked to an article by Fortune covering the bullish attitude towards cryptocurrency by tech executives. 

The Ripple CEO was quoted in the article as saying the U.S. economy was out of sync with other countries in regards to crypto regulations. 

He said, 

China’s been leaving others in the dust in the race around digital currencies and blockchain technologies…The pandemic has accelerated the world’s move away from paper money, and producing the world’s first central bank digital currency, which is something that China is well ahead of where others are, could put China in the driver’s seat to steer the future of payments and currency.

Garlinghouse continued, saying the U.S.’s approach to crypto-assets and XRP could force his company to leave the country in the absence of regulatory clarity. 

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