Ripple CTO bemoans U.S regulators’ lack of ‘clear answers to questions’

Ripple CTO David Schwartz Ripple is in the news after he commented on Ripple’s strategy for expansion and enterprise adoption of payment solutions during the recent Uphold webinar.

More specifically, Schwartz explained the reasons why this has been Ripple’s focus for the past few years. According to the exec, the separation of payments and settlements and the fact that the financial system is based on ancient technologies makes it hard to use a digital asset in international payments.

Ripple, he claimed, saw this as a problem it could solve, with Schwartz adding that it was “something that we felt only we could do.”

According to Schwartz, this was only because it wasn’t something the community could do as a grassroots effort due to the fact that you can’t put software in banks’ payment flows because it takes an engineering team, 24/7 support, and a code that passes external audits.

However, with respect to driving large scale adoption from its desired customer base, Ripple has not moved as quickly as the firm would’ve liked, with Schwartz admitting that the lack of regulatory clarity is the primary reason behind this.

Many Ripple execs in the past, including CEO Brad Garlinghouse, have spoken extensively about regulations and the lack of regulatory clarity being a detrimental factor to the continuing development of the industry.

On the subject of regulations, Schwartz said,

“The United States has an unfortunate tendency of regulators that don’t give clear answers to questions and then a year later go to a business and say you should have realized three years ago that what you were doing wasn’t compliant with regulations.”

Interestingly, the exec’s comments were in sharp contrast to the ones made by SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce after she said,

“Regulators are slow and there’s a reason we’re slow. We need to have [a] process in place so that we make sure when we’re changing rules people have noticed that we’re thinking about changing a rule and they can comment.”

With crypto-regulations continuing to evolve within the United States, much of the innovation in the crypto-industry is focused in and around the country. Despite the aforementioned statements, it remains unclear as to whether Ripple will relocate outside of the U.S as some had previously suggested.