Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse Believes China Is Ahead of U.S. in Digital Asset Industry

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse, has said that China is ahead in making guidelines for the digital currency industry. He made the statement at an interactive session at the Parallel Summit hosted by the Chambers of Digital Commerce. The summit’s July 17 session had Garlinghouse as a speaker. He expressed admiration for the vision China has for the industry which has made the country create an enabling environment for digital space to thrive. Garlinghouse added that the approach has “awed” him.

Brad Garlinghouse mentioned that it is obvious that China has realized the potentials of blockchain and it is clear that they’re aware that this is going to be the future of finance. This realization is what has made the country want to be on top of the game regarding all aspects of the industry such as mining, regulations, etc.

Garlinghouse stated:

“I think they’re realizing that some of these technologies may in fact be very foundational for the future of how financial systems work, and they want to make sure that they have capabilities at the heart of them.”

Garlinghouse about China and U.S. Vision of the Future

Garlinghouse used the U.S. approach to the crypto space as an example of the different approaches employed by the two countries. In 2018 and 2019, the US regulators have declared that Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) are commodities and not securities. This gave many institutions the impetus to start considering the coins as investment instruments. The little attention the U.S. government has given to the cryptocurrency ecosystem is the reason why China is the major dominant nation in the space.

He alluded to the fact that the two digital assets declared securities by the U.S. are largely mined in China. He said:

“Today, because of the mining control of Bitcoin and Ether in China, these are technologies controlled by China.”

He also mentioned that the U.S. seems to have lost the initiative regarding the digital assets space because it is more interested in technologies such as 5G than the novel financial system. Apparently the country is satisfied with the USD dominated financial system.

Garlinghouse added that if the U.S. had taken initiative as it did with respect to the internet decades ago, the country would have been at the forefront of the digital revolution. The reason the country lags in the cryptocurrency space is traceable to a lack of regulatory clarity.

More Industry Opportunities

The Ripple chief said that there still exist a lot of opportunities in the industry but added that if the US would exploit these, it has to have regulatory clarity by forming a clear legislative framework with respect to the blockchain industry and digital currency ecosystems.

As the industry awaits further regulations, Garlinghouse’s company, Ripple has been embroiled in several lawsuits that have challenged the status of Ripple’s coin, XRP. Presently, it risks being classified as a security which would bring the company in conflict with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).