Chris Larsen, one of Ripple’s co-founders, recently spoke with Cheddar at the Crypto Finance Conference to fight back against claims that Ripple’s XRP network, along with other blockchains are centralized entities.

The three-day Crypto Finance Conference in California finished up yesterday with one of the biggest takeaways being that of the thoughts from Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen. In a short interview with Cheddar, he spoke about the current state and future prospects of the cryptocurrency industry and argued against claims that the XRP blockchain is centralized.

In particular, Larsen’s comments were aimed at refuting tweets and comments made by individuals such as BTCC co-founder Bobby Lee. Although none of Lee’s tweets specifically mention Ripple’s XRP, they were very close to the mark and have undoubtedly irritated a sore spot for Larsen — particularly as the tweets in question ring close to home in regards to comments that question how Ripple can realistically claim that it created a decentralized network.

Bobby Lee Claims ‘The Blockchain’ is Centralized

Lee has long been of the opinion that 95% of blockchains are committing intellectual dishonesty and are, in actual fact, centralized.

Lee had tweeted the following at the end of May this year:

How Do Lee’s Twitter Comments Relate To Ripple Co-Founder Larsen and Ripple?

It seems Lee is not the only one that believes blockchain architectures, such as Ripple, are not being completely honest about decentralization. Despite Ripple’s insistence that their network is decentralized, many cryptocurrency purists argue that as 55% of the XRP supply is held in the hands of the centralized Ripple Foundation, XRP is in fact not decentralized.

Larsen’s Reaction To Decentralization Claims When Speaking to Cheddar

When speaking to Cheddar, Larsen said, “there is a religious war going on between platforms,” before continuing to say, “that whole idea around centralization is bogus…its an open-source system, it’s permissionless”.

Larsen also spoke about the lawsuits that his company has had to fight in 2018 regarding securities fraud. He simply claimed that none of the cases has had any merit. As he pushed the discussion forward, Larsen claimed that he has full confidence in the direction that Ripple and the industry as a whole are currently heading.

XRP Will Become a Winning Cryptocurrency

He firmly believes that Ripple, who partners with numerous banks globally to improve cross-border payments, will come out as one of the cryptocurrency industry’s winners in the future.

Larsen stated “Long-term though… we think it’s a key winner in this race to be another digital asset for the world for all kinds of use cases”.

Cryptocurrencies, on the whole, are in the midst of a slump with the current market values of Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP, the three largest cryptos by market cap, being prime examples of this. Larsen, however, is certainly not fazed by this and has the utmost confidence in the industry moving forward.