Jihan Wu, the founder and former CEO of the crypto mining company Bitmain, believes regulations are necessary for the cryptocurrency industry. In fact, they could be beneficial for the space as it would isolate it from bad actors and fraudulent activities.
The topic of implementing a legislative framework around the crypto market has become wildly discussed in the past year or so as prices blossomed to new highs. Global watchdogs have dabbled with various propositions, but most have failed to execute them so far.
Jihan Wu is among those who believe that the market could actually prosper even more once clear regulations go into effect. Speaking to CNBC, he classified the current regulatory pressure as “very healthy” as it could help with criminals.
“I think the regulatory pressure is stronger than before, but it will get a lot of bad actors out of the industry and make sure that the industry’s reputation is much better than without it. So I think this kind of a crackdown may be a good thing for the industry in the long term.”
While commenting on the crypto growth in the US particularly, Wu indicated that “more than 10% of the United States citizens have already got some involvement with cryptocurrency.” Consequently, this adoption could increase only if the country’s watchdogs make it safer for investors to get involved.
Wu also called the Singaporean government “reasonable,” as it acts in a highly efficient and approachable manner. As such, he added, “there are many good reasons for Singapore to be the hub of the crypto innovations.”
Caitlin Long, the founder, and CEO of Avanti, also weighed in on the matter of cryptocurrency regulations recently. In an extensive Twitter post, she argued that the regulatory crackdown wouldn’t impact bitcoin, ether, and other digital coins directly as “base layers will keep adding blocks.”
However, she believes that the real effects will be on intermediaries and access points for the dollar into the sector. She highlighted as a “key event” the end of the commenting period for the Fed’s proposed payment system guidelines, which she thinks also examined digital assets.
Yet, she warned that banks could still request from the Federal Reserve to “block access for anyone who’s not in their club,” referring to previous years when banking institutions halted transfers to cryptocurrency businesses.
Featured Image Courtesy of Fortune
