One of Ripple’s senior executives has stated that the biggest risk they face is regulation. This has been the case with cryptocurrency for some time, but now companies like Ripple are realising this and taking steps early to counter this. Ripple are forming a large team to tackle the potential problems of regulation, with the huge responsibility of ensuring that new customers of the technology start-up don’t feel any detrimental effects due to regulatory red-tape.
“We are going around the world making sure that for the next 1000 customers that we want to bring on, which we think we can do in the next two years, that regulation is not going to be an issue,” said Asheesh Birla, senior vice president of product at Ripple. One of the regulatory issues already looming its head is whether XRP, the financial asset strongly associated with Ripple, is a security or not. The SEC has declared that Bitcoin and Ethereum are not securities, due to how completely decentralised they are. But no such clarification has been provided for XRP, due to the lack of mining and the unclear manner in which coins are obtained. People associate XRP so strongly with Ripple, who own a huge amount of XRP, that they worry that the risk of stricter regulations on XRP would also impact on Ripple.”
But, as CEO of Ripple Brad Garlinghouse is keen to stress, Ripple and XRP are not the same entity.
“I think it’s really clear that XRP is not a security. XRP exists independently of Ripple, and it would operate even if Ripple Labs failed. I don’t think that our ownership of XRP gives us control. Saudi Arabia owns a lot of oil; that doesn’t give them control of oil,” Garlinghouse stated in June. Whatever changes in the world of crypto-regulation, it’s clear Ripple are working hard to stay one step ahead of the game.