Ripple’s Chris Larsen believes AIR will enable collaboration between regulators, industry

While partnership-driven adoption remains the status quo for the crypto-ecosystem, a group of entrepreneurs including Chris Larsen, Executive Chairman and co-founder of Ripple, has announced the launch of a new alliance “to help regulators embrace technology and integrate innovation into their organizational DNA.” The Alliance for Innovative Regulation (AIR) was announced via Jo Ann Barefoot, AIR’s Co-founder and CEO, who highlighted the initiative’s motive by stating,

“Facebook’s Libra announcement is the latest recognition that fintech innovations are outpacing the tech-readiness of our system. To keep up with the exponential change of technology, regulators have to radically decrease innovation cycle-time and adapt quickly to new technologies.”

The official press release mentioned that AIR’s mission is to help regulators understand new technologies and migrate from a mostly analog model to a system of digitally-native design. The Alliance plans to assist regulators modernize their regulatory systems.

Towards this effort, AIR, in collaboration with TechSprint, currently uses a “hackathon” format to help regulators source new technological solutions to age-old intractable problems. Chris Larsen stated,

“The goal is to create new models of collaboration between a complex network of regulatory agencies, and between regulators and industry. “