Ex Federal Reserve Discusses Ripple and XRP Role in US Public Policy

A former Federal Reserve official calls attention to the role Ripple and XRP play in shaping the crypto public policy scene in the United States.

Gregg Kidd, a former Senior Analyst at the Federal Reserve Board for payments, discussed this while speaking at the just-concluded XRP Las Vegas 2024 conference. Kidd, who also served as an early Ripple employee, commended the firm for how far they have come.

Kidd Discusses His Switch to Ripple

In his remarks, the Nevada congress candidate emphasized that he first heard about Ripple while working at the Federal Reserve, noting that the San Francisco-based payments company, which at the time was an emerging one, caught his attention due to its promise.

“I did go from working for the Federal Reserve, which was the deep state, to a poker game with other deep state players like from Google and Visa, and they talked about this new company. There was no Bitcoin company, but there was a company called Ripple,” Kidd remarked.

According to him, Ripple’s module was similar to the Bitcoin ledger at the time, but included two more columns on the spreadsheet, with one of these columns dedicated to the issuer and the other for the currency.

He expressed gratitude to two of the XRP Ledger’s original architects Arthur Britto and David Schwartz for taking the time to educate him on the “future.” Kidd confirmed that this move made him pivot from the “history world at the Federal Reserve to the whole new universe that XRP and Ripple brought.”

Ripple’s Role in Shaping Public Policy

It bears mentioning that Gregg Kidd joined Ripple as a Chief Risk Officer in 2013. He disclosed that at the time he discussed risk management and compliance with Chris Larsen, Ripple’s Executive Chairman. However, Larsen was doubtful of the necessity of this effort, as Ripple had no compliance issues then.

Ripple has so far had to battle the U.S. SEC for over three years on issues of compliance since December 2020 when the agency filed a lawsuit against the firm. The legal battle marked one of the first cases of enforcement actions against a crypto firm, and Ripple has continued to fight the SEC.

The lawsuit led to the declaration of XRP as a non-security by a U.S. court. With the SEC now battling multiple crypto companies, including Coinbase and BinanceUS, this ruling could be cited by these forms to dismiss the SEC’s securities allegations. Recall that Terraform Labs already cited the ruling in its case against the SEC.

Commenting on this reality, Kidd expressed pride in Ripple’s role in shaping the public policy in the U.S., especially in the crypto scene. Multiple industry commentators have identified Ripple as being at the forefront of this fight against regulatory uncertainty in the United States.

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