Former US President Bill Clinton took the stage to address the lawmakers looking into blockchain regulation at Ripple‘s annual Swell conference, held in San Francisco. He stated that “permutations and possibilities of blockchain technology are staggeringly great. But we could ruin it all by negative identity politics and economic and social policy.“
He compared blockchain to the various e-commerce solutions that emerged in the late 90’s and entirely changed the retail industry. in saying so, Clinton noted that the new technology is often plagued with “disparity of access,” which due to its decentralized nature won’t pose a threat to the blockchain technology
The former president referred to GPS technology, which developed during his presidency and faced a similar set of uncertainty as of the cryptocurrency, that the new and innovative tech would be exploited by terrorists or other criminals.
“There needs to be an intelligent effort to identify the downsides [of this technology]. With the blockchain or whatever, you don’t want money-laundering, you don’t want scams. But you end up killing the goose that laid the golden egg.“
The statement clarifies Clinton’s incline towards the blockchain technology, however, he did not hint towards his take on the virtual currencies. Reportedly, back in 2016, he received his first BTC as a gift, though his wife Hillary did not accept bitcoin donations in her presidential campaign.
The roundtable discussion Capitol Hill with the US crypto industry heavyweights and the lawmakers was the latter’s’ attempt to formulate regulations. The regulators warned companies like Coinbase, Circle or Kraken to develop clear and firm policy on ICOs and digital assets or they will be forced to move overseas.
Just recently, Ripple announced that it will lead a new coalition of tech startups such as Klein/Johnson lobby group, aimed at configuring favorable crypto regulation.
