Here’s breaking news around Ripple, one of the major cryptocurrencies that doesn’t always get its share of coverage as it helps to determine the makeup of the overall crypto market.
Today Zach Seward at Coindesk is covering remarks from Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse in Davos, where heads of state and private enterprise are charting the course for the future of the world.
“I think over the next 12 months you’re definitely going to see IPOs in the crypto, blockchain space,” Garlinghouse reportedly said. “I’m not sure we want to be first but we certainly don’t want to be last either, so I expect we’ll be on the leading side of that, not the lagging side… We have been talking to the SEC for some period of time…I feel like educating regulators is part of my job and I think that’s been a really constructive process.”
You read that right – Garlinghouse said IPO, not ICO.
In other words, instead of pursuing an initial coin offering, the executive suggests Ripple will set a trend by going the IPO route and getting involved with agencies like the SEC to conduct broad financial disclosures.
For years, ICOs have been the chosen way that crypto companies go when it comes to going public. That’s partially because unlike IPOs which are typically conducted by all sorts of firms, an ICO allows crypto companies to get around a lot of the existing financial scrutiny, by simply offering a coin or tokenas the initial investment vehicle.
If Ripple actually chooses to go the IPO route, it will indeed set a trend of crypto companies deciding to engage in that more detailed financial vetting process, in order to make them more palatable to investors, regulators, and everyone else worried about the potential for fraud.
The basic rule seems simple: IPOs are for traditional companies, and ICOs are for crypto startups,” wrote Mike Dalton at Bitrates last month. “However, not every company fits either category perfectly, meaning that some blockchain-related companies are going against the grain. They’re turning to IPOs, not ICOs, and dealing with the challenges that come with that.”
For a long time, crypto critics have been talking about the fraud potential in an ICO, to the extent that ICOs are now seen with dubious eyes in many quarters of the investment arena.
Will Ripple create this trend moving forward?
What do you think?
