- Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has said Clarity Act negotiations have “not been pretty.”
- Still, he told FOX Business he’s confident the bill will get passed.
- The Clarity Act has been in a deadlock as banking representatives and the crypto industry disagree over stablecoins.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has said that while the timeline for getting the Clarity Act over the line has been postponed, the crypto industry and lawmakers are closer than ever.
Speaking to Fox Business Friday, Garlinghouse said that the US needs to get the legislation over the line in order for America to be the “crypto capital of the world.”
“We need the Clarity act to get done,” he said. “I’m very optimistic — I was at dinner two days ago in Washington, DC, sat next to people who are much smarter than I am about how law gets made.”
“I’ll say that watching the sausage getting made here has not been pretty, but they gave me more optimism that we are going to get there,” he added.
Crypto executives, US banking representatives and regulators are currently hashing out the Clarity Act — or market structure bill —at the White House. Banking chiefs have clashed with the crypto industry over whether stablecoins will be able to pay customers yield.
US President Donald Trump this month appeared to side with the crypto industry, urging them to get the legislation over the line and telling banks not to hold the vital legislation hostage.
Sticking points
Garlinghouse added that the timeline has been slower-than-expected but that the bill should be ready by the end of May.
The bill, which aims to set in stone digital asset regulation, has been in a deadlock since January, after the US’ biggest crypto exchange, Coinbase, pulled support for the bill.
The digital asset industry wants to pay clients yield on the stablecoins they hold but banking representatives have warned they could lose their deposit base as a result as customers flock to more attractive offers from crypto exchanges.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon this month said crypto companies like Coinbase should be regulated like banks if they want to pay stablecoin rewards.
President Trump earlier this month said that he wanted Americans to “earn more money on their money.”
“The Banks are hitting record profits, and we are not going to allow them to undermine our powerful crypto agenda that will end up going to China, and other countries if we don’t get the Clarity Act taken care of,” he wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social.
Garlinghouse added that the legislation would ultimately help banks.
“If we get [the Clarity Act] codified into law, I think you’ll see more of the largest financial institutions in the United States and the world lean in more to the [crypto] industry,” he said.
‘Chat GPT moment of crypto’
Garlinghouse went on to say that stablecoins are what traditional financial firms will use to slowly edge into the crypto space.
Since President Trump signed the Genius Act last year to regulate tokens, top companies like Visa, Mastercard, Amazon, and BlackRock have accelerated their stablecoin offerings and business ventures.
“We’re seeing a ton of interest, and it’s partly because people are more aware of what’s going on in stablecoins,” he said.
“As a Citibank analyst said, it’s the Chat GPT moment of crypto — people are seeing stablecoins as they kind of the entry point into other blockchain-based and crypto solutions.”
Ripple, whose founders created XRP, now the fifth biggest cryptocurrency by market value, debuted its own stablecoin in 2024.
Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.
