It’s wild how traditional banks can launder billions and still be in business while crypto platforms get all the heat. Stuart Alderoty, Ripple's Chief Legal Officer, is calling out this madness. He makes a solid case about how unfairly targeted crypto is. Let’s break it down.
The Double Standards Are Insane
So here’s the deal: traditional banks have been up to their necks in money laundering scandals. Remember those leaked FinCEN files? They showed big names like HSBC and JPMorgan were moving tons of cash for some shady characters. These banks are supposed to be the model citizens of finance, yet they keep slipping up.
On the flip side, you’ve got crypto platforms. Sure, they’re not perfect and some are downright dodgy, but less than 1% of crypto transactions are linked to illegal activities! It’s like comparing apples to oranges when you consider that between $800 billion and $2 trillion gets laundered through traditional finance every year.
Crypto's Compliance Struggles
Now let’s talk about why crypto has such a hard time fitting into the regulatory framework. A lot of crypto platforms are decentralized by nature, which makes it tough to enforce things like Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) policies. And let’s be real—some exchanges don’t even try to comply with these rules!
Traditional banks have these systems in place because they have to; it’s part of being a bank. But even with those systems, they still manage to get into trouble. So why is there this huge focus on crypto? It feels like scapegoating at its finest.
Moving Forward: A Call for Balanced Regulation
Alderoty suggests we need a more balanced approach to regulation—one that doesn’t just point fingers at new technologies but looks at all players in the game equally. If we keep going down this path of demonizing crypto, we might miss out on some serious innovation.
It seems clear that if regulators want to do their job effectively, they need to wake up and smell the coffee—crypto isn’t going anywhere and neither are traditional banks with their laundry machines running full steam ahead!
