I came across an interesting statement from Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of Ripple. He was showing a fairly optimistic outlook on moves related to cryptocurrency regulation in the United States.

There’s a bill called the Clarity Act that’s drawing attention, and according to Brad Garlinghouse’s prediction, there’s an 80–90% chance it will pass through the U.S. Congress by April 2024. If this bill is enacted, tokens will be clearly defined as either securities or commodities. The scope of jurisdiction for the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) and the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) will also be clarified.

If regulatory uncertainty is reduced, compliance efforts by exchanges and issuers will also move forward, and above all, barriers to entry for institutional investors will be lowered. Brad Garlinghouse said that meetings are already underway at the White House, and that the Senate Banking Committee will begin deliberations soon as well.

However, there are also challenges. The discussion seems to be stalled over the stablecoin yield issue. The banks see stablecoin yield as a threat to deposits and oppose stablecoins providing yields, while the crypto industry defends it from the perspective of innovation. It was also revealed that a certain major exchange withdrew its support for the bill due to this disagreement in viewpoints. Brad Garlinghouse points out that “compromise for progress is necessary rather than seeking perfection.”

Meanwhile, Ripple’s growth strategy is also worth noting. It is acquiring Metaco for $250 million to strengthen its custody business. It is acquiring Hidden Road for $1.25 billion to expand its prime brokerage capabilities. It is also making progress in building a stablecoin settlement foundation, such as launching regulated, U.S.-dollar-denominated RLUSD on XRPL and Ethereum.

What Brad Garlinghouse emphasized is that Ripple is focusing on building infrastructure worth trillions of dollars rather than on the price of XRP. Once regulations become clear, it’s possible that efforts to build such foundations could accelerate further. In fact, XRP has been showing strong performance this year among major cryptocurrencies, and it feels like the outlook for the industry as a whole is gradually becoming clearer as well.