There is a persisting and long held debate in the cryptocurrency community as to whether XRP, the cryptocurrency commonly associated with the early founders of Ripple Labs, is a centralized asset, making it a security, or a decentralized asset, making it a commodity.

The debate is becoming increasingly important, as the Securities and Exchange Commission has been taking increasing steps to crack down on cryptocurrencies that are deemed as unregistered securities offerings. If, on the highly unlikely chance, the SEC decides that XRP is a security, it would negate the practicality of the cryptocurrency, and subject it to a slew of strangling regulations that would greatly decrease its utility and liquidity.

Despite the concerns from detractors of XRP, Ripple’s CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, made it clear to investors and the wider industry that XRP is in fact a decentralized asset.

While speaking to news outlet Cheddar during Ripple’s 2018 Swell event that took place over the past couple days, Garlinghouse explained that XRP is clearly decentralized, mainly because he, as the CEO of Ripple, cannot alter or control the XRP ledger.

“Is XRP centralized or decentralized? It is very clearly decentralized. I, as CEO of the company, can’t control the XRP ledger. I can’t change a transaction. Anybody can participate in the XRP ecosystem, and if Ripple does something that is not in the best interest of the ecosystem, the rest of the ecosystem can ignore us,” he said.

Garlinghouse also explained that the claims of XRP being a centralized security are also faulty due to the economic interest detractors have in spreading misinformation about the cryptocurrency.

“I think there’s a lot of people out there that are fighting ‘holy wars,’ and they’re spreading misinformation…because they have an economic interest. Ripple is a centralized company investing in a decentralized technology, in the same way Amazon was investing in TCP/IP, in some ways.”

One big factor in figuring out if XRP is centralized is whether or not its success is solely based off of the success of Ripple, the company. Although for a while, Ripple was undeniably the main driving force of XRP utilization, mainly with their xRapid settlement system, more companies are beginning to use the virtual currency.

Coil, a startup founded by ex-Ripple CTO, Stefan Thomas, is utilizing XRP to facilitate micropayments for digital content creators. The upcoming platform is currently in trial with companies like YouTube, Wikipedia, and Twitch, among others.

If widely adopted, websites using Coil’s platform would allow users to send micropayments to content creators using XRP, which would remove the need for ads before videos or in between songs that are being streamed.

As the utilization of XRP for xRapid and Coil becomes clearer in the coming months, the debate regarding the nature of XRP will persist, and likely grow.