According to Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, the regulatory approach to the encryption industry in the United States is changing markedly and is now closer to a clearer framework of rules than at any time in the past decade. This statement followed the first meeting of the United States Commission on Commodity Futures Trading (CFTC) Innovation Advisory Board in Washington on 20 August.
According to Garlinghouse, on social platform X, there was general agreement that following the rules developed for the old age was no longer sufficient to address the real needs of consumer protection, business and technological innovation. The Committee is chaired by Michael Selig, Chairman of CFTC, and is composed of members from the encryption industry and traditional financial institutions, covering technical, legal and policy issues.
Ripple's talking about regulatory clarity.
Garlinghouse recalled that Ripple had sent an open letter to the United States Congress in July 2019. At that time, Chris Larsen, co-founder of Garlinghouse and Ripple, argued that digital assets should be regulated according to their own characteristics, and that the long-standing lack of clear rules would discourage innovation and employment.
In his view, the United States was now moving in that direction. According to the text, in March of this year, SEC and CFTC jointly explained how the Federal Securities and Commodity Laws apply to different types of encrypted assets. At the same time, the SEC has introduced a token classification framework.
Multi-agency membership of the CTC Committee
For its part, the CTC has also established an Advisory Committee on Innovation, of which Garlinghouse is a member. He was joined by senior officials of Coinbase, Uniswap Labs, Bitgo, NASDAQ, CME Group and Cboe.
From a signal point of view, the role of such committees is to provide regulatory bodies with industry advice to help them deal with practical issues in the area of the intersection of encrypted assets with traditional finance. For industry, this means that United States regulatory discussions are moving more towards institutional design than just enforcement-level disputes.
Garlinghouse reaffirms the industry's position
Garlinghouse also stated at SALT Wyoming that the encryption industry was never anti-regulation, but rather that the industry was actively seeking rules. He argued that it was not accurate to describe the encryption industry as “anti-regulation” and did not agree that it should be considered a “no law-free” market.
He also referred to the legal dispute between Ripple and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which had lasted for many years. According to Garlinghouse, the federal judge had stated that the XRP asset was not a security in itself, which provided a clearer legal location for the XRP.
This statement is a continuation of Ripple ' s core position in recent years, namely, to promote a more specific and enforceable regulatory framework for encryption in the United States, and to view recent developments at the judicial and regulatory levels as signs of an improved industry environment.