What are Ripple and the White House agreeing on?

In his interview with Braker, Corey Johnson noted that the Ripple team is in negotiations with the White House regarding China's dominance in the Bitcoin and Ethereum mining market.

Johnson declined to name names, but said: “We regularly communicate with Washington, meet with regulators and politicians.” Former US President Bill Clinton did speak at one of the Ripple events in October, but the event was rather informal. 

Currently, the XRP cryptocurrency is the third largest digital asset in the world, according to coinmarketcap.com, its market capitalization is $18.2 billion. XRP cannot be obtained through mining. According to Johnson, the Trump administration is beginning to recognize the viability of this approach from an environmental and foreign control perspective. 

This means that with the help of XRP, the level of foreign dominance in the crypto sector can be reduced. However, it can be argued that XRP changes foreign control to private control.

Ripple is often criticized for holding about 60% of the entire XRP token supply (approximately $10.8 billion at current exchange rates). The company has always stated that XRP is a decentralized currency. According to Johnson, the company has a dominant interest, but the token itself is independent.

In response to criticism, Ripple employees have locked these assets in an escrow account from which they are not allowed to withdraw funds. Some argue that this is another indicator of a tactic to inflate the price of XRP. It is worth noting that some members of Ripple's management have become extremely wealthy.

Johnson highlighted the fact that cryptocurrency mining consumes a huge amount of energy, the extraction of which is harmful to the environment. However, this is unlikely to bother the Trump administration, which withdrew from the Paris climate agreement in 2017. 

In order for XRP to gain institutional adoption, it needs to be regulated. At the moment, the SEC has not yet decided whether XRP can be considered a security. On the other hand, the Ripple payment system is used by many banks, and their number is growing.. This is the main reason for the increase in the value of the token.