Sagar Sarbhai of Ripple has said he believes Blockchain technology and cryptographic assets are now addressed more holistically by lawmakers in an interview with CNBC Markets.
Sarbhai, who is the head of regulatory relations for Asia and the Pacific and the Middle East at Ripple, said he believes that regulators are no longer taking a compartmentalized approach that leads to distributed general ledger (DLT) technologies such as Blockchain in the isolation of the encryption assets themselves.
As the subtext of the interview intimates, regulators have historically approached decentralized cryptocurrencies with circumspection or other absolute hostility, while remaining more receptive to the potential benefits of the blockchain.
The prevailing sentiment used to be that technology can bring great advantages to legacy systems in various industries, as well as to the world of finance.
But Sarbhai said today that he believes the tide is changing:
"A couple of years ago, the narration was good, bad crypto. But I think what we are seeing now is that more and more regulators are taking all the space in a conjunction. You can not build tracks without airplanes ... The narrative is changing and policy makers are recognizing that there is a great benefit that digital assets bring. "
Sarbhai identified some of these benefits as improving financial inclusion and "eliminating barriers to trade." He justified his claims by pointing out recent developments in Thailand, which has provided a strong regulatory framework for crypto-media.
In the context of the USA In the US, Sarbhai responded to concerns that Ripple's native token, XRP, is likely to fall under a security classification, as several high profile ongoing lawsuits allege.
He pointed to the open source protocol of the XRP ledger and its independence from the corporation itself, emphasizing that Ripple controls only 7 percent of the operational validation nodes in the network.
He further argued that XRP investors do not ensure a share or position similar to that of shareholders when they buy the asset, and emphasized that countries such as Australia, the Philippines and Thailand, therefore, have all classified XRP as a commodity.
Sarbhai hinted in particular that Ripple is likely to launch a commercial application of its xRapid liquidity solution for banks "in the next month or so".
As previously reported, China is a good example of a country that maintains a notoriously tough position against decentralized cryptocurrencies, even when Blockchain makes inroads into the highest levels of the political structure.
This spring, Chinese President Xi Jinping openly praised Blockchain as an example of a "new generation" of technologies that offer "breakthroughs," and the country has sealed the world record for Blockchain-related patent applications filed during 2016 and 2017.