The United States of America has been one of the highlighted counties in the cryptosphere for the last few days, owing to the US Congress hearing on cryptocurrencies. While the hearing was the key focus, there was one other subject that had people talking about the U.S and crypto in the same line – the SEC vs Ripple. The case that was filed on the day Jay Clayton bid goodbye as Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman.
While the move had several people in the crypto-space expressing that this was matter of ‘when’ and not a ‘if’, it had left the XRP community in complete disbelief, especially considering that Ethereum was given free pass. This, in turn, resulted in Ripple’s legal team filing for ‘fair notice and due process,’ laying down pretty tough questions to the SEC.
Now, this very same issue was brought up to the former SEC Chairman, Jay Clayton during an interview with CNBC. Clayton was asked about his thoughts on the on-going case, and the accusations of an unfair play by the Ripple fandom, considering he was the one who voted in favor of suing Ripple. However, the former Chairman firmly refused to comment on the subject, quoting the reason to be that it was still a pending action.
He stated,
“I am not going to comment on any pending investigation or action in front of the SEC. I think you know that. We discussed that in the past, and look, its America. People have the right to defend themselves […] I think its government officials do the best they can, let the facts stand where they are, and I am going to leave it at that”
Nonetheless, on being prompted to speak about cryptocurrencies and regulation in a broader spectrum, Clayton affirmed that he was a “huge believer” in this technology and that it has immense potential in the financial system in terms of efficiency. He also stated that the space itself had a wide array of products and functions, while the SEC’s role in the space was limited to only capital raising and trading of securities.
Speaking about regulations, the then Chairman said,
“I have long believed that rules in that area are fairly clear and long standing. If you are raising capital publicly for a project, you generally have to register those sales, that capital raising with the SEC. If you are trading securities, it needs to be done on a regulated venue.”
He further added that crypto-varieties like stablecoin and other tokenized elements present in the space was well outside of the SEC’s purview. Additionally, he expressed that the government should take both reactive and proactive method when it comes to the crypto-space.
“And I would look for the government to be both reactive in terms of people who are violating our securities laws but proactive in encouraging the adoption of this technology throughout our financial system.”
On the interview, Maxi Titlt, a Twitter user commented:
“If Clownton did his research he would of known the XRPL was the first decentralized Ledger with asset tokenization capabilities, dating back to 2012. Yet in the SEC allegations they note the XRPL is the OG of assets tokenization.”
Another user @1895Smiley said,
“Keep asking these questions I’m following What Clayton just described as raising capital being thus a security is exactly what Ethereum $ETH did. So Clayton said it ETH is a security AS they raised capital through an ICO $XRP never had an ICO @SECGov screwed themselves here”
