Ripple CEO: Cryptocurrency industry should cooperate with regulators

The CEO of high-profile payments network Ripple has a request for everyone in the cryptocurrency industry: work with regulators.

“It’s critical that the industry recognizes that we have to work with regulators, we have to work with the system,” Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse told CNBC’s “Fast Money” on Wednesday. “The blockchain revolution is going to happen from within the system. It’s not going to happen from outside the system.”

Bitcoin prices fell below $10,000 on Wednesday after the Securities and Exchange Commission said it would require digital asset exchanges to register with the agency. The announcement comes after weeks of subpoenas from the agency in an effort to rein in the growing number of exchanges.

“There are some in the bitcoin community who are really advocating for not only bringing down the banks but bringing down the government, which we’re relatively not in favor of,” said Garlinghouse, who has an estimated net worth of $3.7 billion and ranks 210th on the Forbes list of the richest Americans.

San Francisco-based Ripple is developing a fast, global financial payments network. XRP is the name of the electronic token that financial institutions will use to quickly transact on the network.

The digital currency was trading near 88 cents on Wednesday, according to Coinmarketcap data. It is listed on more than 60 exchanges, but not yet on the popular U.S. exchange Coinbase.

A CoinDesk article and some Twitter users speculated earlier this week that Garlinghouse and Coinbase President and COO Asiff Hirji’s appearances on “Fast Money” on the same day signaled an impending announcement.

“Coinbase has to decide what it is that they want to do and make the announcement that’s appropriate for them,” Garlinghouse said, adding that he would not “comment on the status of that kind of thing.”

Garlinghouse highlighted Circle’s acquisition of Poloniex in late February and predicted that more deals will follow as the asset class grows.

“I think there will be more consolidation, and I think it will scale,” Garlinghouse said. “It will be just like the real world.”

Garlinghouse said Ripple owns about $60 billion worth of its digital currency XRP and plans to use it as an asset to invest in the development of XRP.

Over the past six months, Ripple has announced that several financial companies have tested the use of XRP for cross-border payments.

Just Thursday, global payments company Fleetcor and its subsidiary Cambridge Global Payments will test the use of XRP. This news follows the announcement that MoneyGram, MercuryFX and IDT will also test XRP.