Crypto winter has changed in tone from the last Davos. There was lot of hype and there was lot of noise around crypto last time and now I am seeing the change. Actually, it is a really a healthy change. There is more focus on utility. These technologies are solving real problems. To their extent, the company is solving real problems for real customers. They continue to grow. Obviously, we continue to hear noise about what is going on with DCG, with Gemini. Hard to know, it sounds like that could work out in a constructive way.
I think all of this has not been great for crypto at large, but again if you just focus on companies that are solving real problems Ripple had a record 2022. We would rather see crypto do well at large, but we had a great year – signed up more and more customers with more and more volume going through our payment rails.
When asked about terms of outlook for 2023 for Bitcoin price: Brad Garlinghouse, “I would like to stay out of the short-term price prediction and all things Bitcoin and crypto in General. I am long-term very bullish because these are technologies that can solve real problems at scale and I think, when you have kind of new emerging technology. It is not similar to frankly like the internet and dot com bubble; sometimes the hype gets ahead of the reality that comes into balance over time, but you should’nt forget not that longer really 21 years ago Amazon during the dot com bubble almost went out of business.
So, the fact that you are seeing some changes in the crypto world it can be healthy towards the long-term health of the industry.
When asked, FTX appears to be a very high-profile case of fraud. There are serious regulatory and auditing gaps that went on with that institution, So, where do we draw the line. We need to strengthen regulatory oversight in this industry, but how close should the relationship be between your peer group and the US regulators who are looking at these institutions.
We talked about this as a crypto problem. Really, this is fraud and I think in some way this is not that similar that Bernie Madoff occurred. When Bernie Madoff occurred, we did not totally restructure about how we thought about regulatory oversight and regulation of hedge funds. Clearly in their case, also the SEC had overlooked and the people had reported the SEC should be looking in to Bernie Madoff. I know the SEC had met a bunch of times with SBF – I don’t know the specifics of what types of oversight they were applying. I do view this as a fraud. I don’t view this as a crypto problem at all at large, but I think regulatory clarity globally is important and we are seeing a lot of countries and here we are in Davos in Switzerland clearly one of the countries leading in providing regulatory clarity in early stage. You have the UAE leading, UK, Japan, Switzerland, Singapore. The US is notably absent from that list. In some way, the US regulators have added confusion to crypto regulation.
We have always said that we would live to settle, but it requires that on a go forward basis we will settle that XRP is not a security. The SEC and Gary Gensler have almost outwardly said, he views almost all crypto as a security and so that leaves very little space in the Venn diagram for settlement. The case is now fully briefed in front of the judge and the judges will take however long the judges will take. And, we are optimistic that this will certainly be resolved in 2023 and may be the first half and so we will see how it plays out from here. I see where we are relative to the law and the facts. I am very Optimistic.
A finance graduate, Maheen Hernandez has been drawn to cryptocurrencies ever since Bitcoin first emerged in 2009. Nearly a decade later, Maheen is actively working to spread awareness about cryptocurrencies as well as their impact on the traditional currencies. Appreciate the work? Send a tip to: 0x75395Ea9a42d2742E8d0C798068DeF3590C5Faa5
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