David Schwartz, Ripple’s chief technology officer, said that the U.S. government banning Bitcoin would be “disastrous” for Ripple in a recent tweet. The same applies to the Ethereum cryptocurrency potentially being classified as an unregistered security.
Schwartz’s tweet came in response to a thread posted by Castle Island Ventures’ Nic Carter, in which he accuses the San Francisco-headquartered blockchain company of actively trying to undermine the two largest cryptocurrencies.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has a history of inaccurately portraying Bitcoin energy usage. Last April, he stated that XRP was 100,000 times more efficient than the largest cryptocurrency. After facing pushback from the community, the Ripple boss clarified that he wasn’t advocating for banning Bitcoin.RelatedMax Keiser Predicts That G7 Country Will Start Mining BitcoinFormer Ripple CEO Chris Larsen has adopted a much more aggressive stance when it comes to Bitcoin. Last September, he urged regulators to punish Bitcoin miners, claiming that the flagship cryptocurrency has to follow Ethereum’s suit by switching to proof-of-stake. In December, he described how major U.S. mining companies could benefit from the extremely improbable code change in a blog post that was widely ridiculed within the cryptocurrency community.
Schwartz himself has been highly critical of the proof-of-work algorithm, describing it as “a technological dead end.” He also argued that Bitcoin was not sufficiently decentralized, which makes it vulnerable to a 51% attack.
On the regulatory front, both Bitcoin and Ethereum have become the targets of Ripple’s lawyers after the company got sued by the U.S over unregistered XRP sales by the Securities and Exchange Commission last December.
Garlinghouse himself claimed that Ether was able to overtake XRP because of unfair treatment.
Ripple believes that resolution of the closely-watched case will be able to provide regulatory clarity.
China Seeks to Tax Bitcoin Exchanges Despite Recent Crypto Ban
Taxing crypto exchanges is still possible
After the prohibiting document was issued, many local crypto exchanges chose to relocate to other countries, like Huobi, and some quit the business.
Large crypto trading platforms, such as Binance, have stopped servicing customers from mainland China since the provision of crypto trading services in China by overseas platforms has also become illegal.
However, the author of the article says that even though it is illegal according to the letter of the law, it is not literally impossible to hold crypto. Thus, the writer says, overseas exchanges may continue operating in China but will be taxed in this case. But a legal framework for this must be created first.
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