Analysis: Google Blockchain GCUL May Become a Competitor to XRP Ledger

Jinse Finance reported that Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has recently launched a brand-new blockchain—Google Cloud Universal Ledger (GCUL), with some of its features seemingly in direct competition with Ripple Labs’ XRPLedger (XRPL). Similar to XRPL, GCUL will be a distributed underlying blockchain supporting API interfaces, 24/7 low-latency operation, programmable asset tokenization, payment automation and other financial applications, transaction fee collection, institutional-grade infrastructure support, facilitation of global payments, and integration with third-party wallets. This series of features, combined with GCUL’s focus on banking and payments, almost replicates the messaging XRPL has promoted for years. In fact, when reading Google’s related documentation, one might not even be able to distinguish whether certain passages are describing GCUL or XRPL. For example, GCUL will be used to “manage commercial bank currency accounts and facilitate transfers through a distributed ledger, empowering financial institutions and intermediaries.” Although XRP is the third largest crypto asset, GCUL is developed and branded by one of the world’s top five companies. The combined market capitalization of XRPL and its backer Ripple is only several tens of billions of dollars, whereas Alphabet’s market cap reaches 2.5 trillions. More importantly, GCUL not only has the backing of a much larger parent company, but has already launched a pilot collaboration with CME, the world’s largest options and futures exchange. CME has tested asset tokenization on the GCUL blockchain—which may involve commodities, options, or futures contracts. In contrast, CME has never conducted any asset tokenization experiments on XRPL.