While a decision is pending on the amount of damages that Ripple would have to pay to settle the lawsuit against the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), recent remarks by the agency’s former chairman have caused disbelief in the cryptocurrency community.
Specifically, despite expressing sympathy towards cryptocurrency entrepreneurs, former SEC chair Jay Clayton also opined that the issue of classification of crypto assets was “overblown” during a Council on Foreign Relations event streamed live on November 21, sparking massive reactions.
‘Overblown’ issue of security vs. commodity
As it happens, Clayton was replying to the question from the audience regarding the appropriate way to regulate the crypto sector, stating that the best way to do so would be first to recognize that “it’s technology, not a product,” and further highlighting that:
“I think the classification issues about whether it’s a security or a commodity are overblown. Most of those decisions are pretty easy to the extent that we’re going to continue to wrestle with those classification decisions – I say get on with it, let’s have regulated platforms where you can put either.”
Commenting on the specific part of the video shared by user Crypto Eri Carpe Diem, Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse said that he was “in disbelief,” sharing the position expressed by other members of the Ripple and XRP community regarding Clayton’s latest statements.
Indeed, one of them is Bill Morgan, a legal expert and popular commenter on the Ripple v SEC case, who pointed out that Clayton’s interest was to harm XRP as a rival to Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), ridiculing his views that the market should decide the value of technology, considering his involvement.
“It only mattered to him when he wanted to damage XRP as a competitor to Ethereum and Bitcoin. And he has the gall to say let the market decide the value of technology after he was involved in the Ethereum free pass speech that went a long way to the SEC picking a winner, not the market.”
Meanwhile, the price of the XRP token at the center of it all stood at $0.60, which represents a drop of 4.26% in the last 24 hours, in addition to losing 3.29% across the previous seven days but still managing to hold onto the 10.43% gain on its monthly chart, as per the most recent data retrieved on November 27.
Watch the entire video below:
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