The chief marketing strategist at Ripple, Cory Johnson believes that Bitcoin is on ‘steroids’.

Johnson outlined what Ripple does and why the company has decided to utilise blockchain to function directly with banks and financial institutions in a new interview with Financial tech Focus Podcast.

The most significant things in the interview are below.

“We’re trying to solve this really big problem, which is moving money across borders. It is insane in this era of technology when I can send a text message to a friend in Rome with emojis and a gif attached to it, or I can send an email to a friend in Capetown, South Africa in three seconds with an Excel spreadsheet attached and all kinds of information. But I can’t send anything of value. I can’t send value or money with anything less than 500 or 600 basis points of cost, and it’ll take me three to five days.”

He continues to say:

“That’s crazy, and it doesn’t reflect the best of technology. So we have a handful of software products that I think do reflect the best of technology, that move value and money across borders in seconds, not days, and for less than 100 basis points instead of hundreds of basis points. And the software is deployed by banks and financial institutions so that know-your-customer rules and anti-money-laundering rules are all obeyed by the banks as they are now. But they use our software to move the money more quickly and more cheaply. A year ago, Ripple was signing a new customer every six weeks.

Now, we’re signing one every six days. So it’s a really dramatic difference in terms of what’s happened. But I think that it’s still so early because we’re still selling it. I think there will be a day when the banks who are using our software are so happy that they’re getting the accuracy they want. They’re getting this incredible speed, that it knocks their socks off. Imagine when you’re used to something that takes you five days that now takes less than a minute to do. And that’s just a game changer right there. That’s going from the pony express to email.”

The marketing strategist also dug into Ripple’s outlook on XRP, the third biggest cryptocurrency in the space, and why he thinks the token improves upon the leading crypto Bitcoin:

“Ripple is fundamentally an enterprise software company. We make software and sell it to financial institutions, basically banks and remittance companies. And some of our products use a cryptocurrency, a digital asset called XRP…

The technology of XRP, it’s like Bitcoin 2.0. It’s Bitcoin, but it’s faster. It’s Bitcoin, but it doesn’t use tons of power. It’s Bitcoin, but it’s not controlled by Chinese miners. But fundamentally, it is a blockchain digital asset that is used principally for the movement of value.”

Controversial comments to say the least...

As mentioned by the

DailyHODl

, Developers at Bitcoin are currently implementing a second layer solution called the Lightning Network which aims to speed up transactions for Bitcoin. But the Network isn't expected to drastically reduce the energy that’s required to power the Bitcoin network.

What are your thoughts? Is XRP Bitcoin 2.0? Let us know what you think down below in the comments!