cryptocurrency
© Marco Bello / Reuters
The real problem with digital assets is that "historically there was a lot of hype in the crypto ecosystem," Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse told Bloomberg. He said most cryptocurrencies will probably become worthless in the future.

"There are more than 3,000 digital assets that trade on a daily basis now," he said, adding that "99 percent of crypto probably goes to zero but there is one percent that is focused on solving a real problem for real customers, and is able to do that at scale and that's going to be game-changing."

That one percent is going to continue to grow significantly in the decades ahead, according to Garlinghouse.

He also forecasted that 2019 and 2020 will be all about the real utility of digital assets. Talking about SWIFT, the leading messaging network for financial institutions, he said it is more volatile given that it takes two or three days to settle a transaction.

Cryptocurrencies like ripple would be a better alternative to SWIFT, he said, explaining that an ordinary XRP (cryptocurrency used by the Ripple payment network) transaction only takes a few seconds, which is a major selling point.