Ripple has pronounced XRP dead, or more accurately, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said the exact opposite when he announced the company would launch a USD-linked stave coin later this year, but in the big picture, XRP's usefulness is declining (sorry XRP Army, it's my job to tell the facts as they are).Seeking the Next Source of RevenueRipple's stablecoin, which is expected to launch later this year, will be backed one-to-one by cash equivalents, including U.S. dollar deposits, U.S. Treasuries, and other low-risk investments to create a more reliable alternative to assets like Te0zer (USDT) and Circle's USD Coin (USDC), according to the company announcement. As many others have pointed out, the $150 billion stable coin market is already highly competitive, but also extremely profitable.USDT, the first and largest stablecoin currently dominating the market, is being used as a dollar store to fund CEO Paolo Ardoino's many ambitions (from AI to decentralized messaging).Ripple, which could face fines of up to $2 billion from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), may be looking for a new, reliable source of revenue, Garlinghouse told CNBC, seemingly unfazed by the stiff competition.In many respects, Ripple's existing business model (XRP Ledger, On Demand Liquidity, and the sale of financial services based on the RippleNet protocol) is inadequate.While Ripple has had some success in building partnerships, it seems increasingly clear that legitimate financial institutions are unwilling to tolerate the volatile currency risk of dealing with crypto assets whose prices are not stable.Ripple's 10+ year history has often seemed brilliant in building a community (the XRP Army) and in pursuing a philosophy of crypto assets (it fought a legal battle with the SEC on the key issue of whether tokens are securities), but it has been less successful in creating a product that businesses and individuals actually want to use. No one uses XRP itself as a payment method, just like almost no one uses Bitcoin (BTC) as a payment method," said Austen Campbell, a professor of business at Columbia University and former manager of the Paxos Stablecoin Fund.

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