Ripple’s General Council: US May Lose "Cold War" to China Through Lack of Crypto Regulation

In a recent blog post, the general council of Ripple, Stuart Alderoty, discussed the topic of the U.S. lagging behind China regarding support offered by the government to the nascent blockchain technology (and crypto).

Alderoty stated that Ripple is all in for crypto regulation in the U.S. to improve the way money moves around the world and in order to prevent China from winning leadership of this sphere.

Regulation should lead to stability

Stuart Alderoty reminded his readers that Ripple stands for an overall improvement of the present financial system that includes banks and regulators. That is why the company urges those regulators, and the SEC in particular, to implement regulation for blockchain companies who issue coins—to allow them to exist in a predictable system in which they could work without expecting any negative surprises from authorities.

He pointed out that regulators still cannot find an answer to the question of which digital assets can be qualified as securities and which cannot. Bitcoin and Ethereum have been excluded from this asset group already, Alderoty reminded the audience.

However, even regarding XRP, this issue has not yet been solved.

China getting ready to take over from the U.S.

Alderoty worries that, while this state of things remains in the U.S., China already controls about 65 percent of Bitcoin mining and possibly a large part of the ETH mining hashrate, since the government provides great amounts of energy at discounted prices for mining.

He believes that China is already capable of blocking or reversing BTC and ETH transactions.

Without proper crypto regulation, Alderoty implies, the U.S. risks losing the leadership it may have in digital finance to China. Besides, China is already trialing its own crypto (digital yuan or DCEP) with major banks and payment platforms.

Is the U.S. really willing to allow China to win this new technological and economic Cold War and, with it, allow China to dictate important parts of a new global payment system? Unfortunately, that is exactly what the U.S. is allowing to happen.

Ripple is all for regulation

Stuart Alderoty stated that since Ripple strives to improve the current financial system from inside and generally improve the way that money travels around the world, it looks forward to a regulation regime that would not be harmful to U.S. companies.