Over-Regulation Could Kill Golden Goose: Bill Clinton

According to former United States President Bill Clinton, there is a need for avoiding too many regulations for new technologies such as blockchain. Clinton was speaking to the technologists and bankers at the Ripple’s Swell conference in San Francisco. Bill Clinton also suggested that the blockchain industry must weed out crime, fraud, and money laundering to realize the potential of the emerging technology.

The conference was organized by the fintech company, Ripple. Ripple is a cryptocurrency as well as a payment processor. In the conference the chief executive officer of the Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse announced that the blockchain product of the company, RippleNet supports the commercial and cross-border transaction. According to Brad, traditional international transactions take days and incur high foreign exchange fees while the cross-border payment with RippleNet is fast and the users can save on high foreign exchange fees. Credit union Catalyst Corporate Federal Credit Union and two payment providers MercuryFX and Cuallix are already using the cross-border functionality of Ripple which uses Ripple cryptocurrency XRP.

In the conference, Bill Clinton was joined on stage by Gene Sperling, the board of director of Ripple. Gene has also served Bill Clinton as an advisor in the White House when Clinton was the President of the United States between 1993 and 2001. Gene was the top shelf speaker at the event. During the question and answer round with Gene Sperling, Clinton touched a wide range of issues such as cybersecurity challenges which the government of the United States is facing other than this he has also covered gun laws and foreign policy.

Clinton cautioned the audience to protect the general public without killing the golden goose. Clinton also compared the blockchain technology to the rise of the internet during the 1990s and said that the blockchain technology has the same kind of potential and it can improve the efficiency of various processes. Clinton also concerned about the potential use of cryptocurrencies by terrorists, criminals, and money launders. There is a need for intelligent efforts to identify the downsides of the technology and applying the regulations accordingly. Clinton believes that it is not fair to apply the old regulations to the new technologies.

According to Clinton, there are great possibilities in the field of blockchain but we could ruin the technology by negative identity politics and economic and social policy.