Ripple Could Leave U.S. if Regulatory Environment Fails To Improve

October 12, 2020

by CCM

Ripple Could Leave U.S. if Regulatory Environment Fails To Improve

Last updated on December 7th, 2022 at 08:39 pm

Ripple Executive Chairman Chris Larsen hinted that the company may pull out of the U.S. if the country’s regulatory bodies continue to stay very hostile towards cryptocurrency businesses.

The chairman made this statement during the LA Blockchain summit yesterday. He mentioned that the U.K. and Singapore as the countries the Ripple fintech could relocate to if the regulatory environment in the U.S. does not improve soon.

He also admitted that the top-line federal regulatory oversight may still be there even if Ripple leaves the U.S., but the company may have a soft landing in those countries.

The U.S. has been anything less than friendly to cryptocurrency related projects. We’ve reported on some of this regulation in previous blog posts. The posts include most recently, new regulatory framework for cryptocurrency exchanges, the FinCEN director warning banks of risks regarding crypto and the SEC chairman hoping for tokenized stocks.

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Ripple Contention with SEC Over Regulatory Issues

Presently, Ripple is receiving mixed signals from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and is still battling investor regulations about XRP being a security.

Larsen further stated that the U.S. is far behind many other countries when it comes to dealing with crypto regulations, as China is now far ahead on digital currency innovation.

Furthermore, he is supporting a Biden administration. Larsen claims that in such an administrative climate, as much as 65% of the miners domiciled in China could come back to the U.S. if there is a favorable regulatory platform for them.

Although Ripple has a majority stake in the XRP cryptocurrency, the firm is maintaining that the network overseeing XRP transactions is decentralized like Ethereum or Bitcoin.

Facebook’s Libra Facing Similar Issues

The battle Ripple is facing with U.S. regulators is similar to the one Facebook’s Libra is having currently. Libra has seen incessant delays due to some regulatory and political drawbacks, as many national regulators do not see Libra as a feasible digital currency.

Ripple’s XRP issue is coming after a wider debate over the role of digital currencies and central banks. Several critics have warned against U.S. lackluster attitude towards innovations in the digital currency industry.

Many are opening that China’s imminent launch of the digital yuan will skyrocket the Asian nation to the top when it comes to digital innovation, leaving the U.S. behind.

They also asserted that the U.S. could fall far behind other countries in Blockchain technology, which could affect the dominant status of the U.S. dollars.

This is coming at a period when top payment companies are setting up payment plans that could enable Bitcoin and cryptocurrency transactions.

MasterCard, for instance, has launched a software that allows central banks to test digital currencies in a controlled environment.

Larsen Says Crypto May Do Better Under Biden

There have been many critics of Donald Trump’s administration, as many have opined that the economic position of the U.S. is being threatened because of the stringent policies the present administration has enacted.

Many are being optimistic about Joe Biden becoming the president because they feel he will redirect the policies and open up the digital currency landscape for companies and investors.

As it stands, most fintech companies have their headquarters elsewhere because of the favorable business environment in those places.

Larsen has predicted that the cryptocurrency industry will breathe better under a Biden administration if carbon taxes are placed on crypto’s energy efficient mining operations.

The 65% of cryptocurrency output being controlled by Chinese miners needs to be slashed down to repatriate some of them back to the U.S., he reiterated.