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Monica Long says “the SEC is not a friendly entryway for us into the United States”
Monica Long, president of Ripple, joined Arjun Kharpal, senior correspondent for CNBC, on Money 20/20 to discuss the infrastructure needed to deploy cryptocurrencies.
Their conversation centered on the topic of “Building Infrastructure Fundamentals,” which focuses on the perception and adoption of digital assets by traditional financial institutions.
Long noticed a significant change US legislation and traditional financial institutions, citing the Bitcoin ETF Approval in the United States as a crucial time for cryptocurrency adoption. “BlackRock getting involved was a great moment,” Long said. Many financial institutions have slowly adopted crypto technology, recognizing it as a contemporary financial framework, Long said.
Clearer rules
Despite the recent Ethereum (ET) and Bitcoin (Bitcoin) ETF approvals, Long highlighted the need for greater regulatory clarity. Speaking about the real-world uses of digital assets, Long highlighted the benefits of decentralized institutional finance (DeFi) in basic banking transactions.
“Basic financial services such as 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 impact of the internet on communication.
Long mentioned the The European Union cryptocurrency markets (MiCA) as a prime example of a clear regulatory framework and touched on the United States’ slow but steadily improving relationship with cryptocurrencies.
“Entering the U.S. market through the SEC doesn’t seem like a door that will give us friendly, friendly entry,” Long said.
Long expressed cautious optimism about regulatory clarity in the United States, noting that stablecoin legislation could be a positive step.
Private and public blockchain
Long also discussed the debate between private and public blockchains and pointed out that private blockchains are still used for technologies such as central bank digital currencies (CBDC), but there has been notable progress in public records.
For example, Société Générale issued the first euro stablecoin on a public ledger. Ripple is also launching a stablecoin regulated in US dollars.
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 is fraud, which is what happened in the case of FTX finance. There are blatant compliance violations, violations,” Long said. “But it’s not that the technology is bad or that all the actors paint us all as a wide range of scammers and criminals.”
The FTX collapse and frauds do not reflect the entire cryptocurrency industry: positive blockchain applications remain, Long stressed.
“There are consequences resulting from these events, but it is important to separate fraud from legitimate applications of the technology,” he said.