🌎 Ripple President Monica Long on Crypto Adoption and Regulatory Clarity

Monica Long, President of Ripple, recently joined Arjun Kharpal, Senior Correspondent for CNBC, at Money 20/20 to discuss the infrastructure needed for crypto implementation. Their conversation centered around “Building Infrastructure Fundamentals,” focusing on traditional financial institutions’ perception and adoption of digital assets.

Shift in U.S. Legislation and Financial Institutions

Long noted a significant shift in U.S. legislation and traditional finance institutions, citing the Bitcoin ETF approval in the U.S. as a crucial moment for crypto adoption. “BlackRock’s involvement was a big moment,” Long said. Many financial institutions have been slowly adopting crypto tech, acknowledging it as a contemporary financial framework.

Need for Regulatory Clarity

Despite the recent Ethereum (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC) ETF approvals, Long emphasized the need for more regulatory clarity. When discussing the real-world uses of digital assets, Long highlighted the advantages of institutional decentralized finance (DeFi) in basic banking transactions.

“Basic financial services like deposits, payments, lending, credit, and capital markets can benefit from a more global, open, and efficient system,” Long said, comparing blockchain’s potential impact on finance to the internet’s impact on communication.

Long mentioned the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation as a prime example of a clear regulatory framework and hinted at the United States’s slow yet steadily improving relationship with crypto.

“Entering the U.S. market through the SEC doesn’t sound like a door that’s going to have a friendly, friendly entryway for us,” Long said.

Long expressed cautious optimism about regulatory clarity in the U.S., noting that stablecoin legislation could be a positive step.

Private vs. Public Blockchain

Long also discussed the debate between private versus public blockchains, pointing out that private blockchains are still used for tech like central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), but there have been noteworthy advancements in public ledgers. For instance, Société Générale issued the first euro stablecoin on a public ledger. Ripple is also launching a regulated US dollar stablecoin.

Addressing Fraud

Long emphasized the difference between fraudulent behavior and the technology itself when discussing the repercussions of scandals like FTX.

“To clarify, as an industry, there’s fraud, which is what happened in the case of FTX finance. There are blatant violations of compliance, violations,” Long said. “But it’s not that the technology is bad or that all players paint us all with a broad brush of fraudsters and criminals.”

FTX’s collapse and fraud do not reflect the whole crypto industry — positive blockchain applications do remain, Long stressed.