Former U.S. President Bill Clinton made that big appearance at a cryptocurrency industry conference Monday to offer expressions of caution to lawmakers seeking to regulate what he characterized as a promising technology advance.
Onstage at Ripple’s Swell conference in San Francisco, Bill Clinton was joined by Gene Sperling, a former White House consultant who sits on Ripple’s directorate. Bill Clinton – who served as U.S. president between 1993 and 2001 – was the best speaker at the event, which saw former Federal Reserve seat Ben Bernanke take the stage a year ago.
Indeed, the organization has been pushing into establishment circles with specific enthusiasm in recent months. Only days prior, it was reported that Ripple and others had created the Securing America’s Internet of Value Coalition (SAIV), a support gather that will pay its DC campaigning firm halfway in XRP.
Amid the question-and-answer session with Sperling, Bill Clinton touched on a wide range of points, for example, the cybersecurity challenges confronting the U.S. government. He additionally discussed subjects seemingly outside the limits of a budgetary technology conference, including weapon laws, foreign approach and his recently published novel.
Yet perhaps most relevant for the audience at Swell was Clinton’s remark about the “divergence of access” to new technologies like blockchain as they develop and develop, indicating the emergence of e-commerce arrangements in the late 1990s as a parallel.
Bill Clinton remarked:
“The more you develop new technologies like blockchain … AI technologies, robotic technologies … the more the disparity of access is going to be felt.”
He likewise acknowledged the sentiment that new technologies can be abused, indicating the concerns that cryptocurrencies can be used by terrorists or other culprits to launder money. Referring to comparative concerns over technologies like the Worldwide Situating System (GPS), Bill Clinton noted that “there needs to be an intelligent effort to identify the downsides” and that “you can’t have any significant bearing [an] old regulatory regime to a new technology.”
“You end up killing the goose that laid the golden egg,” he included.
On the theme of blockchain itself, Bill Clinton remarked that “this whole blockchain deal has the potential it does simply because it is applicable crosswise over national borders, income gatherings.”
He went on to state:
“The permutations and possibilities are staggeringly great. In any case, we could demolish everything by negative identity governmental issues and economic and social approach.”
