XRP scored another victory in its years-long legal battle with the SEC this past week.

The development is one more indication that the end to the Crypto winter that we called months ago is panning out. (See “CRYPTO ADOPTION CONTINUES TO RISE IN DEVELOPING REGIONS AND CUTTING EDGE TECH HUBS” 5 Jul 2023 and “SYNERGIES SPELLING NEXT CRYPTO WAVE,” 25 Jul 2023.)

We noted on 5 July:

“Crypto is flowing fastest to where it finds the least resistance. And the efficiencies and strengths of the technology are rewarding that adoption, not based on some theoretical ideal ‘investment’ criteria, but in terms of providing some core practical benefits and advantages compared to other options.

“Taken together with signs that the crypto clampdowns in the U.S. and China are both proving harder to realize than authorities might have supposed, and it adds up to a definite feeling that the lowest lows have been seen in this cycle.”

The SEC dropped charges against Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, and Executive Chairman Chris Larsen.

BusinessWire reported Garlinghouse’s reaction to the news:

“For nearly three years, Chris and I have been the subject of baseless allegations from a rogue regulator with a political agenda. Instead of looking for the criminals stealing customer funds on offshore exchanges that were courting political favor, the SEC went after the good guys – along with our entire company of innovators and entrepreneurs – who are building a regulated business based in the U.S. We look forward to the day this chapter is closed once and for all, now that the SEC has dropped the curtain on their absurd theatrics against Chris and me.”

Late last week, on the heels of that news, the cryptos caught a new wind, and prices surged for almost the entire sector.

Government Technology Stance With Regard to Cryptos and AI Has Been Markedly Different, and the Question is, Why?

The latest Ripple decision follows a significant court victory won in July, in which a judge ruled that at least some XRP tokens that have been sold to individuals via crypto exchanges, do not constitute “securities,” and thus are subject to the regulatory whims of the SEC.

And our use of the term “whims” is not used lightly. Many have roundly condemned SEC commissioner Gary Gensler’s persistently opaque “regulation by enforcement” method of suing firms for claimed infractions of very old laws that were not contemplated with crypto technology and innovations in mind.

Gensler is widely viewed as having an anti-crypto animus.

The way governments have allowed AI technology controlled by a handful of tech giants to proliferate, while trying to crush relatively decentralized crypto technologies, exposes the biases of government regulators who claim to be concerned with protecting citizens.

In the case of AI, corporations so far have largely been allowed to massively steal IP and collective human knowledge to narrowly exploit and profit, while displacing a growing number of human workers.

Not only that. Next to no regulation is preventing the development of bleeding edge “Singularity” AI, or a form of sentient Artificial Intelligence which will be able to outperform human intelligence in every respect.

In fact, governments are in a race to develop and weaponize the most sophisticated possible AI, or use in wars and global dominance.

On the other hand, government approaches to crypto technology, which has the potential to remake financial and monetary systems to be much more inclusive, and less controlled by authorities, has been far different, especially in the U.S. and China. The Euro zone has been only slighter friendlier.

And as The Trends Journal has repeatedly pointed out and forecast, developing regions have the most to immediately gain by catching the innovation wave that cryptos represent. (See for example “CBDC OUT TO PRESERVE STATUS QUO FOR HAVE AND HAVE NOT COUNTRIES, SAYS NEW STUDY” 24 May 2022, “CRYPTO FLOWING TO DEVELOPING REGIONS” 24 Jan 2023 and “CRYPTO ADOPTION CONTINUES TO RISE IN DEVELOPING REGIONS AND CUTTING EDGE TECH HUBS” 5 Jul 2023.)

Entrenched interests in world leading economic powers, including financial institutions, governments, and even lawmaking and law judging politicians and legal system authorities, have thoroughly abused the fiat currency and financial system, to enrich themselves from laws, regulations and inside knowledge.

Many of them have no wish to see that legacy system superseded by innovation which takes financial and monetary abuse out of the equation, via transparent blockchain databases, dispersed oversight of systems, whether by miners voting (ie. the Bitcoin network), or staking interests (ie. Ethereum and other proof of stake networks), or innovative DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) frameworks.