Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of Ripple, recently appeared on CNN with anchor Julia Chatterley to discuss Ripple’s operations, setbacks, and future outlook.
XRP has been one of the biggest cryptocurrencies to increase in value alongside the rise of bitcoin.
XRP’s overall market capitalization increased by almost 300% in the last three months, but that’s not because of the firm’s involvement in the United States.
Regulatory Concerns
Although Ripple is still a United States-based company, the vast majority of Ripple customers come from outside the US. The firm is planning to move its headquarters to a different country with more lenient cryptocurrency regulations.
Garlinghouse stated that about 95% of Ripple’s customers reside outside the US, as there’s still too much regulatory uncertainty when it comes to most cryptocurrencies in the country.
Garlinghouse explained that many US companies are not willing to get involved with Ripple yet, as there’s no clarity on the usability of XRP in legal terms by governing bodies such as the SEC.
Years ago, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released clarifying statements regarding the two biggest cryptocurrencies in the space, Bitcoin and Ethereum, but has not made any clear statements on others.
The SEC made it clear that it does not designate Bitcoin or Ethereum as securities, allowing for much more defined rules on how the assets can be treated and used. The same hasn’t been done for other major cryptocurrencies yet.
Ripple: Challenging to Work With US Customers
In this interview, Garlinghouse elaborated on what it’s like trying to work with US customers to integrate the Ripple platform, and that regulatory uncertainty makes it quite a challenge.
According to Garlinghouse, even though there is a multitude of United States-based companies that are interested in integrating and using Ripple, most companies will not risk integration until there is a proper legal framework that provides this clarity.
When compared to other countries around the world, Garlinghouse doesn’t see this type of hesitation. He explains that there’s a clearer frame of reference on how to handle these types of digital assets from a legal perspective.
Garlinghouse believes that XRP should be legally treated the same way as Bitcoin and Ethereum by the SEC, in other words, it should not be categorized as a security.
He went on to say that he is unaware of any other market globally that would treat XRP as a security. Until there is more regulatory clarity around how Ripple and XRP can be treated, the vast majority of Ripple customers may continue to remain outside of the US.
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