Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has stated that XRP is  not only independent of Ripple, but the XRP ecosystem hosts Ripple as just one of a number of participants. He made the comments during an “Ask me anything” session as part of a Q4 2018 sit down with Ripple Senior VP, Marketing, Monica Long.

The session tagged “Ask Me Anything with Brad and Monica” included a number of interesting opinions as well as predictions ahead of the coming year. One of the questions that came up was the often-debated issue of whether or not XRP should be classified as a security.

Reiterating his long held position, Garlinghouse replied:

I think its very clear XRP is not a security… I think is if Ripple the company shut down, XRP trades on a hundred other exchanges around the world and XRP would continue to trade. Yeah, Ripple is one important participant in the XRP ecosystem but there are a whole bunch of participants.

He went on to state that while he acknowledges that the SEC has a difficult job regulating the crypto market, Ripple will continue to work with the SEC and other regulators around the world to ensure that XRP is understood as an independent open-source digital asset separate from Ripple.

Optimistic Outlook for 2019

It will be recalled that amidst the many woes of the crypto market in 2018, culminating in the so-called “crypto winter,” XRP has continued to post strong performances as it benefits from growth of the Ripplenet, leading to growth of volumes and global user numbers.

A lot of this growth is built on Ripple’s wealthy project support community and the fact that it remans the only cryptocurrency to have successfully integrated payments system of big banks with its platform. CCN recently reported that XRP overtook Ether to become the second most capitalised cryptocurrency behind bitcoin.

Referring to an earlier prediction that 2018 will see an increase in participation in digital assets from institutional investors, Garlinghouse stated that he has now pushed that back to 2019. He also dodged a prediction for bitcoin, describing it as a tough call to make because of the persistent risk of manipulation that currently exists on exchanges.

In his final prediction for 2019, Garlinghouse stated that he expects to see an increase in transparency in more projects , as cryptocurrency moves away from its clandestine roots toward regulation and subsequent mass adoption. As a direct result of this he said, 2019 will also be the ear that banks will begin holding digital assets on a large scale.