Ripple CEO Stirs Community Rage Over DOGE-Zimbabwean Dollar Analogy

During the recently held World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, as a member of a Panel, took a jab at canine-themed memecoin Dogecoin (DOGE), emphasizing that he is yet to discover its use case.

Ripple CEO on Dogecoin’s Utility

Garlinghouse expressed skepticism towards the use cases of DOGE, adding that he fails to see the utility and purpose of the coin. In addition, he pinpointed Tesla boss Elon Musk as the central actor in the memecoin’s marketplace which has in turn helped to drive the popularity of the token in the crypto ecosystem. 

In response to Garlinhouse’s statement, Dogecoin co-founder Billy Markus popularly known on X as Shibetoshi Nakamoto, compared DOGE to Bitcoin (BTC). For Markus, there are only a few slight variations that make DOGE any different from the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

“The super dumb thing about this is dogecoin is essentially the same thing as bitcoin with mildly different parameters and a dog mascot,” Shibetoshi Nakamoto posted on the X app.

He further criticized Garlinhouse’s comment by equating it to gaining an understanding of the Euro and choosing to say that Yen is nonsense. In Markus’ opinion, this was “just little brains pretending to be smart.” 

In a more recent post, the Ripple CEO showed he has no plan to let Billy Markus’ clap back slide, making a more dissenting contrast involving the coin.

The USD and Zimbabwe Dollar Analogy

At first, he acknowledged Markus’ juxtaposition, stating that he understood the point he was making with the Euro and Yen analogy. He even claimed to agree in some ways but suggested that a more appropriate scenario would be comparing the United States dollar to the Zimbabwean dollar. 

Both currencies share the same title but are not the same in terms of value and use cases.

The USD is one of the globally recognized standards in terms of national currency and is widely accepted by many merchants. Noteworthy, unlike the Zimbabwean dollar, the USD is used for cross-border trades as the global reserve currency. Taking this back to Bitcoin and DOGE, this was Garlinhouse’s way of saying the utility of Bitcoin surpasses that of Dogecoin. 

The latest response from Ripple CEO seems to have thrown Markus off-balance as he ended up deleting the post where he initially made the comparisons.

I understand the point you are making and agree with the point in some ways – but a more apt comparison would be the USD to the Zimbabwean Dollar.

— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) January 22, 2024