Newly-discovered White House records show the head of Ripple met with a senior Trump administration official twice in 2018.
Documents from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget show Ripple’s Brad Garlinghouse met with special assistant to the President Caroline Moore on September 26th and October 3rd. The documents were unearthed by XRP enthusiast and investor Steven Diep. Both meetings appear to have lasted for the better part of the day.
In addition to being special assistant to the President, Moore is also director of the Office of the Chief of Staff, according to ProPublica.
Although the subject of the meetings remains under wraps, former Ripple chief marketing strategist Cory Johnson referenced direct talks between the San Francisco startup and the Trump administration that same year.
“There’s clearly a lot of homework going on. The White House in particular seems to be thinking about what it means to have 80% of bitcoin mining taking place in China and a majority of Ether mining taking place in China.
When you look at XRP, there is no mining, so from a foreign-control aspect or from an environmental aspect, XRP is a very different beast. And in conversations we’ve had with the administration, they seem to get that and think that might matter… We’re in regular talks throughout Washington, and we meet with regulators as well as politicians. We’ve got a whole team that’s devoted to doing that, not just in the US, but worldwide.”
Ripple has long pushed US regulators to adopt smart and sensible policies on crypto assets.
In July of last year, the company took out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal, urging members of Congress to learn about digital currencies and create policies that protect US companies that are developing and investing in the emerging technology.
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