The Pomp Podcast - Perianne Boring, President of the Chamber of Digital Commerce: The Current State of Crypto Regulation

Episode Date: January 17, 2020

Perianne Boring is the Founder & President of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, the world’s leading blockchain trade association. In this conversation, Perianne and Anthony discuss the current state of crypto regulation, the roles of the SEC, CFTC, & FinCEN, the biggest potential concern in Washington, D.C. around crypto regulation, and what you at home can do to help organizations like the Chamber of Digital Commerce be more effective. ETORO-----This episode of Off the Chain is sponsored by eToro, the smartest crypto trading platform, and one of the largest in the world. Join 11 million other traders and create an account at etoro.com and build your crypto portfolio the smart way. PROOF OF TALENT-----A technical recruiting firm built for the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry. If you're looking to start a career in the blockchain industry, visit proofoftalent.co and get started today! -----If you enjoyed this episode and want to stay updated on everything Bitcoin, blockchain, and crypto. Check out Off The Chain newsletter by visiting offthechain.substack.com and join 35,000+ other investors currently subscribed to my daily investor letter.

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to Off The Chain, simply the best podcast in crypto. Let's kick this thing off. Perianne Boring is the founder and president of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, the world's leading blockchain trade association. In this conversation, we discuss the current state of crypto regulation, the roles of the SEC, CFTC, FinCEN, and others, the biggest potential concerns in Washington, D.C. around crypto regulation and what you at home can do to help organizations like the Chamber of Digital Commerce be more effective. I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope you do as well. But before we get into the episode, I want to

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Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. All right guys, bang bang. I am here with Perianne. We've got a whole bunch of shit to talk about. You probably sit in one of the most interesting seats in the crypto industry because you deal with over 200 different companies and members at the Chamber of Digital Commerce. So thanks so much for coming and doing this.

Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been an amazing year, and I think 2020 is going to be remarkable. Can we say it's been an amazing year in 2020? We're recording this on the 6th or 7th of January, or do we have to say last year was an amazing year? I think this year has already been an amazing year. We're in crypto time, remember? All right, fair, fair, fair. Let's start with your background. I think you come from a whole different world than most people in crypto. Just give us kind of an overview and then how you got into Bitcoin, blockchain, cryptocurrencies. Yeah, so my background is in public policy. My biggest passion is monetary policy, how money works and how it's regulated. I got into crypto

when I was working on Capitol Hill. So I worked for a member of the Financial Services Committee. I went to D.C. to really fight for a better economic future for my generation and those that will come after me. I grew up in Florida, and the financial crisis was really devastating to really anybody in Florida and my community. And I was actually studying economics at the University of Florida during the financial crisis, so kind of a historic moment to really dig into what was happening all around me. And I was very frustrated because my professors could not explain what was happening in real time in our economy. And it's actually Ron Paul was running for president, and he was the only person who could make any sense of what was

happening. And what I learned through that was quite disturbing, just the amount of debt and the deficits and just the lack of transparency and basic ethics in our financial system was quite upsetting. And so at a young age, I just dedicated my career to economic policy and for fighting for something better. So that took me to the White House. I was an intern at the White House. What's that like? That was really surreal. Which president? President Obama. I was there right after he was brought into office and I was there during the bailouts. So I was in the National Economic Council when Larry Summers was running that. And part of my job as an intern was tracking all the stimulus funds, which I was adamantly against. So it was interesting to be

and in the middle of that. But to come from a very small town in Florida and to say, you know, I want to work on economic policy and I want to fight for something better. And then within less than a year, find myself in the middle of the White House, you know, in the National Economic Council that's making these decisions had this huge impression on me. And really what came out of that was that you can do anything you want. You can do anything you set your mind to. And, And, you know, the first African-American president, it was just, you know, it was such an empowering thing for me to get to experience that as someone who didn't come from like a super wealthy family or, you know, a family that was well connected in politics. But to get to have that experience as a young person was just really amazing. So after the White House, went to Capitol Hill, worked for a member of Congress in the House of Representatives and, you know, was there during Dodd-Frank and advising on all issues impacting economics and financial services.

And then I learned about Bitcoin. So I was working on the Jobs Act and one of my friends was like, look, if you're excited about crowdfunding, you should really look into this thing called Bitcoin. And, you know, a smart friend. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, I owe them my career. this point but um you know the idea that there's a currency that's not controlled by a government or a group of people or a corporation that it's you know it's open and it's transparent that was just an unbelievably fascinating idea to me so i quickly fell into a rabbit hole i'm still in that rabbit hole but what came out of uh that is you know i think this technology is the most important

thing i'll see in my entire lifetime uh and i really wanted to be a part of this space um so I spent some time really thinking about what do I have to offer? How can I help build this community? Of course, my background is in public policy. What exactly is public policy? Everyone hears that word, but if you don't come out of the government, Washington, D.C., that whole culture and industry, I don't think people really know. When you think of public policy, like what is that? Well, the policies overseeing laws and regulations, but the process on how laws are made, the legislative process, that's an incredibly important thing to understand because you can spend a lot of time running all over Capitol Hill and not get anything done. How can

you be effective in those roles? Working with the agencies, the regulators, and then also the courts affect policy as well. As someone who had worked on Capitol Hill, my job was to meet with all the special interest groups, all the lobbyists, the lawyers, and was lobbied on all sorts of issues involving banking and finance. And you see a lot of very disturbing things, people who have all sorts of terrible motives, things that can be very destructive for the people who are going to be impacted by these laws and regulations. So I really wanted to build something that could, one, stand the test of time, but two, could not be manipulated or controlled by a group or an organization or people that may have motives that are not pro the growth of crypto and blockchain.

For sure. So that's why we are a nonprofit organization. So how did you come up with the idea for the chamber? So 2013 was the year that I was studying and trying to decide, you know, how do we want to do this and how do we want to build it? And I really spent that year studying nonprofit law. I knew I wanted to set up a nonprofit, but what kind of nonprofit? How do you do it? And that was also kind of the year of Bitcoin's first international coming out party, I guess.

So, you know, the first thing was Cyprus was going through their bailout. in the European Union, and people started buying Bitcoin because it was an uncertain economic environment. And that was pretty cool. And the price of Bitcoin went way up because it got these international headlines. And it was really the first time that Bitcoin as an alternative currency actually proved to work. So that was pretty cool and exciting. But then there were some not so great things that happened that year. You had Silk Road, which was a massive black eye to the industry. And then, of course, Mt. Gox, which shouldn't have happened, but also a huge PR nightmare for this community. And as someone who was living and working in DC and really can

see how regulators and lawmakers can read a headline, and that's kind of their first impression and their understanding, how that can be a problem for us. So in the early days of this space, you know, most people in Washington just thought Bitcoin was literally like the currency for drug dealers had like no idea these amazing companies were behind this. There were companies building this technology for positive things. And that that is a recipe for disaster. Someone should tell me about the dollar. Come on. Yeah, I'm putting that into perspective. It certainly can be a fun mental exercise to go

through all right so you say hey look i want to start a non-profit you basically spent 2013 studying all the non-profit law trying to figure out what is the right structure how do you want to do it etc what were kind of the first steps when you got started you just create the entity and then go out to a bunch of companies and say hey do you want to be a part of this like how did it work originally yeah and in those days we launched in july of 2014 so we're about five and a half years old today. That was a really different era in crypto for those who were around back then. There's not that many who are in the five-year club. But it was, you know, no public companies were at least admitting. We know now there is lots and lots of companies that were

investing all sorts of R&D in this space. But, you know, the banks hadn't come out yet. We weren't even using the word blockchain back then. You used Bitcoin with a big B to represent the protocol for those who may be experimenting with other things. But and also that community was very, you know, the early community was very libertarian, kind of, you know, anti-government, anti-regulation. And so then we came out and it's like, yo, we actually think we should be engaging with regulators. So I wasn't quite sure what kind of response we were going to get.

And I'll never forget when we announced the chamber. I did it at a conference, a Bitcoin conference in Chicago, and I was like, either these people are going to try to kill me or maybe they'll think it's cool, but so far, so good. But we launched with about 15 founding members, and it was really those two scandals of Silk Road and Mount Gox where you had legitimate businesses who said, look, this is not good for our business to have these types of things out there in the news. it is important that we have professionals and experts who can work with lawmakers to help them understand and clear up misconceptions that they may have seen or read, but also help guide them

in their jobs as policymakers and make sure that the laws really do take into account the unique characteristics of this technology and that the laws are going to foster innovation, not prevent it. Yeah. How much of what you guys do is education versus like, hey, you should create this law. right so like the more like lobbying type stuff versus let us help you understand how the technology works and like why this is important etc yeah i mean the first several years of the chamber it was pretty much all education and that's still a huge part of what we do and a big part of how we're spending our time is is one being that resource making sure that we are talking to the right offices or you know working with with the the agencies that that have

jurisdiction over this space and making sure the people who are in charge of this topic have the right information so that that's a huge continues to be so a big part of the job which makes sense to do that through a trade association because it would be incredibly expensive for any one company to you know hire a handful of people in dc just to make sure all the relevant people in dc understand this space yeah but if we collectively if all these companies can come together and share in the chamber's resources we all get to benefit from that and it's a much more effective way to educate the policy community yeah i've talked about on the podcast before i went on my infamous trip to dc yeah i spent uh two days there and uh i walked away with my head spinning i was like

what the hell is this place uh just in the sense of the way that things worked the uh various types of people who work at the different organizations the different um kind of legislators offices uh how information gets shared across all of these different people and then how things get done right kind of by building consensus and and um really uh i think being patient uh which is very different than most technology technologists or innovators are used to um and so what have you seen as like the positives right as you guys have done this work do you see a lot of these regulators and lawmakers being like oh you know what like i now understand and they're actually changing their perspective or do you see them kind of fighting this like what's the response today after you

guys have been at this for you know five years uh it's it's a funny question and yeah dc is definitely a complicated uh organism but i each agency has very different personalities um it wasn't that long ago that we did a briefing for uh the the sec who you know the the industry's best friend at this point uh spent a lot of time i got no problem with the sec i think they're doing their job right they're doing their jobs all right i'm cool with the sec yeah they haven't done anything like there's other countries where the regulators have stepped in and been complete you know just heavy-handed uh frankly done things that have really really hurt people trying to build right so they've actively worked against it i think what's happening here is the sec is

kind of saying look we're not going to change anything yet right like we're still trying to understand and to me like that may slow people down but it's not uh anti-crypto regulations being passed as far as i understand you you may think differently of that yeah so just even just the attitudes of of the people there are quite telling in terms of of where they are uh and and we as a resource to to them you know we we we do a lot of education um for them but thought hey you should probably be aware of these things that are happening in other places in D.C., so from other regulators and in Congress, and things that we're seeing in the industry that you should be aware of. We're here to be a resource to you to make sure you are informed, but also we're forming

our opinions on some of these things. So we would also like to understand your thoughts on this. And a lot of times, you know, those conversations can get like a lot of pushback. It's like, hey, we're here to help you. Like we, this is not like, we don't have to do this. Like we're here to make sure you have the right information and you're fully informed and, uh, and help guide you in your thinking in that. Uh, and just, just the, the, just the, the attitude again, is quite telling it into where, where they are, um, in this space. And then you juxtapose that with, uh,

that same week we did a similar briefing for Fenton, uh, you know, and their, their job is to protect the financial system. And, and they are, it's a completely different attitude there. You know, you know, go in you know want to educate them hey we think you guys made a mistake here but we want to point this out to you and show you how to correct it uh and they're like so grateful thank you for this information this is super helpful we really appreciate it so it's uh it's you kind of never know like where where where the pushback is going to come from but then when you do have a group or a regulatory agency who really wants to to work together and really wants to create that bridge

between the the policymaking community and the industry it's really fulfilling and when you can do you know get meaningful policy done in a way that's going to support this industry um it's worth it so uh i'll give a shout out to cameron and tyler uh over at gemini uh does crypto need regulation does it need rules or can this thing hold can this whole thing happen without rules and without the regulators uh participating uh i mean that's an interesting philosophical debate I would say, look, the government does exist and they have guns and they can put you in jail. Those are all facts. So it's better to help shape that process than for it to be shaped around you.

This is going to happen. And that's a big thing we tell our members is that there's regulators, law enforcement, Congress, they're looking at this, they're scrutinizing this. They are going to impact the future of your business and this industry. And it's imperative that we are at the table and that we have a say in the direction that that's going to look like for the future. I generally think that that makes sense. Right. It's like, look, whether you want it or not, it just naturally they're going to do something. Right. It's almost like they feel the need to do something, whether that's do a bunch of work and say, hey, the rules we have currently are good enough or they come with new rules, et cetera. A lot of it's defense, too. A lot of times you have groups trying to change the laws and it's like, wait, no, the laws work. We don't need to change them. Let's block this from moving forward. And there's a lot of things that people never know that we do because we're actually preventing things from happening. So you don't see it, but it's. So this gets into one of my favorite topics, and I don't think I've actually ever talked about this publicly, but I'm really interested in the propaganda wars that go on in D.C., specifically if you think of Bitcoin and crypto as like a financial technology. There's a lot of big financial services firms, a lot of payment processors, credit card companies, etc.

They probably don't want to see this happen. Do you get any kind of sense that like there's definitely the what I call anti-education, right, or kind of the nefarious education of them pushing a narrative that is hurtful to Bitcoin and crypto in D.C.? Or have we not got to that level yet where they're so scared of it or threatened by it that they're starting to kind of do the anti-lobbying? It's very possible. It's very possible. all there are some very disingenuous things that we see what's the most disingenuous the one thing that really really just gets under my skin is these anti-money laundering arguments where you have you know secretary the treasury secretary mnuchin gave you know a speech from from the

white house saying you know we take uh you know anti-money laundering seriously and terrorist financing seriously and these virtual currencies and bitcoin uh you know they're issues with uh with AML, if that's really what you're concerned about, you should be so excited about Bitcoin because it is a completely transparent, radically transparent system. And if your job is to follow the money, we have actually given you the best tool ever possible to do that. So it really, that type of pushback is, it's just kind of weird. It's like, do you not, did you, do you understand? But let's break down what he's saying, right? So do they take anti-money laundering and terrorist financing seriously.

I actually think that they do, right? Like it's something they talk about. It's something that they definitely want to be on top of and be the best in the world at. I think the question becomes, that's your intention. It's really, really hard with, especially physical cash, right? I think that's where the big issues come in

in the US dollar system. If you're using the banking system, as long as the bank is not being nefarious, it's pretty easy to identify money laundering or nefarious activity, right? Where I think the issues show up is the thing like the Dantz Bank in, I think it was Estonia or wherever, where they're just laundering money because they're bad employees, right? They're empowering people to do this.

What should be, and I think what you're hinting at, is like Bitcoin is a transparent, immutable ledger of transactions. Like literally here is all the transactions. You don't have to subpoena the bank, you know, and you just get all the transactions. The hard part to me, if I'm sitting in their seat is if you don't understand how Bitcoin works very well, then you just look at it as, oh, we can't tell who's who. But actually, it works the same way, right? There's still going to be fiat on and off ramps. There's still going to be identifiers and et cetera. And so it becomes this cat and mouse game between criminals and law enforcement. But to your point, I think law enforcement just got a big step up in their abilities because that transparent ledger is

out there for anyone to see right yeah no i i think the aml as a you know as a risk for for cryptocurrencies is not a legitimate reason to not embrace this technology because we have tools to address that um but yeah that also requires the you know law enforcement to do their jobs and to learn a new technology and they have and it's been a boon to law enforcement so somebody said to me uh the other day that was a great example they said uh it's like a car right if somebody said hey criminals can use a car to get away from bank robberies they can breathe air yeah should we ban the air well well and on top of that they can run somebody over in the crosswalk right and then they can use their cars they use the internet they use computers all technologies are going to be abused

by bad actors of course and so it doesn't mean that you get rid of it it's just that you make sure you understand how they're going to use it you try to use it against them right to in order to uh to capture them um so that makes sense all right let's talk about membership uh you guys have what, 220 members or so? Over 200 companies. So we are the first blockchain trade association and the largest. About 40% of our members are public companies. We represent a number of banks and financial institutions, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo. JP Morgan's in the blockchain trade association. A member of the chamber. Jamie, man, what's going on, dude? I know, I know. And then we also represent a number of technology companies like IBM, Microsoft, Cisco, consultancies like Accenture, KPMG, Deloitte, you know, big companies that have, you know, big practices exploring and investing.

Would it be fair to say that the big companies are the blockchain, not Bitcoin crowd? Some of them, not all. Some of them. I mean, so they're and these are the people, you know, that we work with. A lot of them are very pro crypto, but there's a lot of hurdles to using and touching crypto in a highly regulated environment. So, you know, one of the reasons why they're members of the chamber is so they can understand how the regulations apply to them and make sure they have the tools that they need to be able to innovate in this space. um and then about 60 of our members are crypto companies and private companies and startups so we represent a number of the crypto exchanges custody providers companies innovating with smart

contracts that really runs so i saw um and i don't know if this is something you guys touch on but i saw an article i think it was today or yesterday um that was talking about kraken so jesse over at kraken's been super uh transparent and very vocal about um the the regulators are being um i want you to disrupt this probably too strong of a word but uh it's very costly to deal with a lot of the um subpoenas and and the um you know uh probes and things like where they're trying to get information we have to have all these licenses and of course the the exchanges have to have licenses on a state-by-state basis yeah so you're maintaining that well he says that they spend over million dollars right last year yeah the other one is uh block stack when they went through their

filing to do the regulated token offering i think they said they spent like two or three million bucks right i mean these are like legitimate costs for a business especially a young business yeah how much of the work you guys are doing is uh trying to not even change the law or or keep the law the same but just share the information right to me like if you're a regulator and you're sitting there and you're realizing hey we're putting a pretty pricey a pretty high price and a pretty high burden on these companies i don't know if i necessarily change my behavior but it's a good data point to understand like this is what the company's going through it's almost kind of like walk you know a little bit in their shoes to understand if you're a young

entrepreneur young meaning the company is young um it it's hard to build a business if you're spending millions of dollars dealing with regulations and things like that yeah absolutely Absolutely. I certainly feel for small companies who want to innovate in this space, but then are up against massive regulatory hurdles and barriers. A big part of what we're doing at the chamber is sharing those resources. So again, it would be incredibly expensive for a startup to hire a team in DC just to understand the regulatory landscape, let alone try to impact it. So if we can come together and share those resources and have everyone benefit from the resources that we have at the chamber, the membership will pay for itself 10 times over

by just having access to that information. There are a couple of different types of businesses in this space that have higher regulatory costs and the exchanges are absolutely at the top of that list. So if you want to be a crypto exchange today, you one, have to register with fencing at the federal level for your anti-money laundering regulatory requirements. And then you have to receive a license in every single state that you have customers in. And that's the one thing Jesse has been very vocal about is the state by state regime is it's costly and all the states are doing it differently. New York being the most different. And of course, he went on a very vocal tangent calling New York like the crazy ex-girlfriend that won't leave you

alone and decided to just leave New York altogether. And I would argue that you probably can't be a startup and operate in that space because of how expensive it is. And so there's not there's not this huge community of crypto exchanges. And that's really how innovation and economies grow is by having lots of different options. So, you know, it's competition. You need competition. That's how two horses run faster than one on the race. We make each other better by having that. And so these huge barriers to entry are impacting market formation, which is very anti the principles that this country was founded on.

Yeah. I want to get into some of the regulatory issues before we start recording. We kind of outlined four of them that I think are really big and important going into 2020 and beyond. And I'll kind of throw them out there. And then you just give me a here's where we are. Here's why it's important and kind of what you guys are doing or the message that you really want regulators and legislators to hear. The first is one of everyone's favorite topics, KYC and AML. We touched on it a little bit.

But this one is very broad, I think, because it has application to pretty much every business that's touching any sort of transactions. What are you guys seeing around the KYC AML issues and kind of what are you trying to accomplish there? A lot of things. So we have an AML task force. There's an incredible amount of activity in the AML space. Just last year, there were 27 bills that were introduced in the U.S. Congress that would all call for a study, a different study, to look at the AML risk of virtual currencies. 27 different bills calling for 27 different studies? Yes. That's a lot of studying. Yeah. So a part of what we've done for our AML work involves working with Congress, helping coordinate those efforts, and also to bring balance to the conversation.

So again, yes, there are AML risks, and we should understand the risks, but we also need to understand the benefits. So anytime you put together a pro and a con list, you don't just list cons, you always list the pros. So it's amazing how much you have to remind people to do that. But ensuring that Congress has those types of tools and impacting those conversations and then helping steer legislative language that's going to impact AML programs for this space. Over at FinCEN, they issued guidance in May of 2019 saying that the funds transfer and travel rules apply to convertible virtual currencies. And this is something that is going to impact what's called vast virtual asset service providers. All right. Well, hold on. Let's back up for a second. So KYC AML is one component of it. And I think that that's probably the the top of mind for most of the legislators and regulators, just because it's really easy to wrap your head around. Right. It's just, hey, there's money laundering. We want to stop money laundering like this is all bad stuff. Right. I think your point is, OK, yes, there is definitely concerns and risks there. We should understand what those are. But virtual currencies, Bitcoin, Libra, central bank digital currencies, whatever, they also provide some benefits.

Let's look at this holistically and then make decisions on how do we create rules around the pros and cons. Right, and not only that, so Fenton was actually the first government organization to issue any guidance around virtual currency in 2013. That's pretty early. And so they actually have provided a great degree of clarity on how these laws impact this space. But Congress is a separate policymaking body, and they want to make sure that we're addressing these risks. And part of what we've even done is gone to Congress and say, look, we don't actually need new laws because FinCEN has the jurisdiction they need, and it works. And companies for many years have been building their AML compliance programs based on the existing laws. So changing them today would be very costly and expensive and disruptive.

And by the way, I don't know if that's actually going to help FinCEN. So part of that is also making sure that Treasury understands what Congress is wanting to do and making sure that what they're trying to do is coordinated and is actually helpful. Yeah, make sure they're communicating with each other, right? Okay, so that's the AML and KYC world. Then there's this travel rule. Explain like what exactly that is. So the funds travel and the funds transfer rules,

FinCEN this year came out and said that it applies to convertible virtual currency transactions. transactions so uh what that essentially what it means is it's requiring identity at both sides of the transaction okay so if i want to transact bitcoin or any other virtual currency kind of in air quotes uh they're saying that a business needs to know who i am and who you are if i'm going to transfer you anything okay that would require them to then conduct the kyc or aml at some point on both sides of the transaction so they know which is not exactly how it works okay why not because you don't need identity to to send crypto you just need a public and the private key can the public key be the identity oh no no they want pii personal

identifiable information and so there was um i'm gonna forget who came on uh it'll come to me in a second, but they were talking a lot about how we have essentially through things like the Patriot Act and other legislation in the past, we've essentially empowered the banking service to become surveillance, right? And they are very, very in tune with who you are, what you're doing with your money, who you're transacting with, where you go, what you buy, right? I mean, they're very much the first line of defense for law enforcement. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so in order for you to retain your privacy, you essentially can't use the financial system, right, because of these rules and laws. So how do you think about the balance between law enforcement needs to be able to get information at certain times and do their job, but also at the same time there are individual rights and privacy as a default, et cetera, that an individual should enjoy based on what America has been built on.

So how do we balance that? It's a very, very delicate balance, and it's something we spend a lot of time thinking about. first and foremost, we don't want to regulate the technology. You want to regulate the applications, companies that are building applications on the technology. We don't want to impact the growth and the innovation of this technology. But also, we want rules and regulations to take into account the unique characteristics of this technology so it works, so businesses can grow and be successful. with this particular issue, AML issue, it's very much looks like the laws and the rules that have been applied to banks. And that's what they're used to. So the script of stuff is very different.

And our argument is, well, the industry should work together with the regulator to create a rule that reflects how the technology works. And only through that process will we be able to meet the spirit of what you're trying to accomplish so together as an industry and and the regulators uh being able to to make sure that it takes into account how this technology works you'll actually get better rules and regulations and how it's currently um written is uh is uh concerning what is the impact if it kind of stays how it is now right like what is the negative impact to either companies or or the industry so well companies could be out of compliance so if a company takes a stand hey i'm not going to invade the privacy of my users and get this information

they then would be out of compliance and open themselves up to a lot of enforcement actions yeah which would destroy the business yep and so it's a pretty precarious position to be put in as company right invade the privacy of your users or deal with the us government and it's not just the us government this is actually a requirement from fatif which is the internet who sets the standards for um aml internationally so all governments are around the world are having to implement their own version of the funds travel and the funds transfer rules um so this is not actually well talked about in this space. There's a lot of people that probably don't know that one, these rules have already been issued and the way that companies are able to send and receive transactions is

going to be fundamentally changed by this. And the industry has been given a year to implement it and we're still within that year timeframe. So AML is one of the top issues that we are working on at the chamber. First and foremost, we want to make sure our members, really all companies in this space, have the tools and the resources to be in compliance with these laws, because an enforcement action would be incredibly damaging, not only to that business, but it'd be a big black eye to this entire industry. And then work with the regulators to make sure that as we are putting together anti-money laundering protections in the crypto space, that we're doing so in a way that is not hindering the innovation, the growth of blockchain networks.

Got it. That makes sense. Tokens. There's a whole rabbit hole of this token. So much to do. So some of the issues around tokens, first and foremost, is just how do you define the tokens, right? And this is, I think, where, like, the Token Taxonomy Act and some of this stuff comes in. How are you guys thinking about that right now? So in the token space, we have a group called the Token Alliance. It's a working group that we established over two years ago now. Token Alliance?

The Token Alliance. Sounds like Power Rangers, like all come together, right? Yeah. We have a couple of former regulators who are co-chairs of that. We have Paul Atkins, who's a former SEC commissioner, and Jim Newsom, who's a former CFTC chairman. And then we just recently brought Chris Giancarlo, the most recent CFTC chairman, onto our advisory board as well. But the Token Alliance was brought together in a moment where we have a lot of regulatory uncertainty. We have over 400 individuals that participate in this group, and they've issued a series of guidelines and considerations while we have regulatory uncertainty. So it's our way of

self-regulation. It's a step towards self-regulation. And it's the industry coming forward and putting together what they think the considerations should be without having the clarity from the SEC and from regulators. It is quite amazing that several years into this, we still don't have commission and binding guidance from the SEC on how to apply the Howey test to digital assets. And you have, you know, essentially they're picking winners and losers where they have said in public speeches and statements that Bitcoin and ETH are not securities, but basically everything else, like we're not really, we don't have binding guidance. So that, you know, 100% legal clarity. And so for regulated companies to get into this space, they can't take like a

non-binding speech. It's not going to pass the legal team's check marks to be able to do really meaningful stuff in this space. So it's holding back innovation in a big way. The easiest thing would be if the SEC issued actual guidance on this, and they're not going to, at least not under the current leadership. So that's why you now have all these efforts happening in Congress. Someone who worked in Congress, I will tell you, you go to Congress as an absolute last resort. Only about 2% of legislation that's ever introduced will become law. It is a very hard process to get through the legal process, but that's where we are. And it's great that we have a number of members of Congress that are weighing in and that are trying to provide solutions to make sure the industry has the clarity they need in the securities laws and to clarify the jurisdiction of digital assets.

That's one part of it. But also other issues around tokens that we're seeing since Facebook's launch of the Libra Association, the House Financial Services Committee has made it one of their biggest priorities to oversee that process. And so they've brought in Mark Zuckerberg and David Marcus. They've had a number of hearings. And what came out of that is a couple of pieces of legislation that they introduced, the Managed Stablecoins or Securities Act, an associated listing prohibition bill, and then this wonderful work of art called Keep Big Tech Out of Finance Act. The one we're really focused on is this managed stablecoin bill, which would consider certain types of stablecoins as securities. And we call that a ban because if they are treated as securities, they would not be able to be used as their intended purpose as a payment mechanism. At the Chamber, we have over 11 companies that have issued stablecoins. I'm putting that in quotes. So we probably are the largest stablecoin stakeholder in the world because we represent so many of these companies. Are you putting it in quotes because they're not so stable sometimes?

Well, how do we define? No, I'm actually putting it in quotes. Well, yeah, they're not always stable. Even just they can go up and down by a few basis points. But we've been arguing the definition of a stable coin and a managed stable coin and what exactly does that mean and which ones are going to be in this bill and which ones are not within the definitions of this bill. Either way, it's a bad piece of legislation for this ecosystem, and we don't want to see it go forward. But at the very end of the year last year, we got some information that it was moving forward for a markup and it was going to be added to the calendar. And that means it's actually moving through the legislative process.

And it was really the first time in the history of the crypto space that we had a bill that we were against that was moving in such a way and would really destroy certain business models and applications for our space. So we had a lot of fun the last couple weeks of the year. We brought a bunch of those companies to D.C. We met with these different offices and ultimately it got pulled and it didn't go forward for the markup. So we played a role in preventing that from moving forward, but we are expecting to see it on a calendar later this year. But Congress's oversight in response to Facebook is something that needs to be taken incredibly seriously because they do have concerns. And I would say these are legitimate concerns. But again, we want to make sure that the industry's voice is taken into consideration to make sure that these laws are helping support innovation and not just banning it for all the wrong reasons because we're afraid of it or because we don't understand it. yeah speaking of uh kind of innovation and uh governments uh the central bank digital currencies yeah uh it seems like um there's central bankers around the world and we'll get to one of the uh the the most uh infamous ones in a second but they saw oh this bitcoin thing yeah who cares like

these random people on the internet have no chance of creating money that would ever threaten our uh kind of our world or our kingdom uh then mark zuckerberg facebook and about 30 other companies come out with libra and then it like shook them awake and they said whoa hold on a second these people have two billion people they actually have more people than we usually have using our currencies if they create a digital currency and give it to two billion people that is a massive threat to what we have done as a central bank over you know a lot of years where are they now and how do you guys think about them creating competing digital currencies at the central bank level uh them trying to regulate out competition from private companies right like

there's a bunch of different paths that they can pursue here how do you guys kind of evaluate the landscape and then what are you guys doing there or what would you like to see be done around these central bank digital currencies so according to the bank of international settlements over 70% of central banks that are members of the BIS are either interested in exploring or building central bank digital currencies. So that's pretty amazing to think that the most powerful financial institutions in the world are exploring blockchain technology. On one side, that's pretty exciting. On the other side, how are they going to do that? And how is that going to impact the crypto space. So we're following those trends. And I think the one that's probably the

most furthest along is China. And the People's Bank of China has been looking at blockchain and central bank digital currency for over five, maybe six years. And they have built a massive platform. You've talked about it on this podcast before. But what's really unbelievable is they have filed over 80 patent applications on their central bank digital currency project. It is massive. It is a huge investment. It is a big strategic move for the country as a whole. And I think that's going to be a very important thing for everyone to understand because that can impact monetary policy and the financial system globally. So it was actually Dovi Wayne, who you've had on here, who wrote an op-ed talking about the magnitude of this project,

and she mentioned these patents. So I sent that article to our patent attorneys outside council that we use and said, hey, have you looked at these? And they're like, no, we can't find them. And Adobe had to actually show us how to go find them in the system because they were obscured under all of these separate names. But we found them. We found 84. We have translated them into English. And we've been studying them over the past couple of months. And we'll be publishing this cachet. We'll be making it available once everybody can learn what we've learned. But two, we think it's important that the Fed understands that, too. And we think the United States... And these are patents in China? That the People's Bank of China for just their central bank

digital currency project. So we'll be releasing that in the next couple of weeks. We'll share our findings and our thoughts on it and making them available in the English language. But one thing that we have been advocating at the Chamber of Digital Commerce specific to the United States is having a national action plan for blockchain. We think the United States should be taking this technology incredibly serious, as serious as we've taken other advanced technologies like the internet and 5G and AI. And we think whatever countries are at the forefront of this are going to benefit greatly. And we selfishly want the US to benefit from that. But also from a regulatory perspective, these efforts need to be better coordinated. But one of the bigger

challenges that we have is you have so many different regulatory agencies with different types of jurisdiction. The SEC wants everything to be a security. The CFTC are considering these tokens commodities. You have the IRS that taxes them as property, FinCEN that's regulating them as currency. There's really no holistic view or a lot of reason or sense to how the regulatory frameworks are moving forward. So having a coordinated strategy, I think, is going to be incredibly important, especially for small businesses that don't have unlimited resources to figure this out and have teams of people going to all these different regulatory authorities to making sure they're in compliance with all these different offices. There should be a central

coordinator. And that's a big part of our national action plan for blockchain, but also making sure our government is at the forefront of this technology, because it's going to be important for our economy and international security. Should the dollar get digitized? It already is. Is it? Yeah. I mean, there are digital banking services, and we use money digitally already. Should the Fed issue a dollar on a blockchain? That's something that Cristian Carlo has called for, a.k.a. Crypto Dad. He's recently joined our board of advisors.

That's a big passion project for him. And if you talk to him, he thinks it's the most important thing to ensure the United States dollar remains the world reserve currency for another generation. This is an issue of our dominance worldwide. And by having the Fed issue a central bank digital currency is the way to preserve that over time. I completely agree with him. If you're trying to optimize for the dollar to be the global reserve currency for the foreseeable future, if you do not tokenize it or digitize it on a blockchain, you will, in essence, shoot yourself in the foot. You have to be a technical leader to be a leader in anything else.

Yeah. There's this interview from June 2018 with Mr. Augustin Carstens, who's at the Bank of International Settlement. and uh there's four specific quotes that uh i want to pull from this interview it's a gem of a speech if you have not uh looked at this speech it's titled my message to young people stop trying to create money is everything you could ever wish and hope for from a central banker and the reason i want to pull these four quotes is uh i think it gives a great understanding and insight into how some of these people think um and so when i say the quote i just want you to give me your kind of immediate thoughts and reactions. The first is, quote, it is therefore the duty of central

bankers to ensure that purchasing power is maintained. Moreover, there has to be a guarantee that money is able to fulfill the important role in the economic system and that monetary policy can help growth and income distribution. So ensure purchasing power is maintained. What does that mean? It means inflation is not happening. So your purchasing power is declining every time you print more money and that's literally what these banks are doing so if that's really the priority it's a little counter to counterintuitive well if their duty is to ensure that purchasing power is maintained they failed absolutely it's uh one of my favorite things to explain to institutional investors right because they don't think about kind of

inflation and monetary supply and all this stuff i say uh the u.s dollar has lost value every single year for the last 100 years every single year and it's actually it's quite it's a hidden tax and it's quite sad because a lot of people don't understand it and it is uh it's literally robbing people of of their their savings and from the people who need it the most you know the the it's really the poor people it's the middle class the lower middle class that are mostly impacted by this and uh it's one of the reasons why i got into this space is to fight for those people that we really do deserve something better and we deserve sound money for sure i completely agree um and then uh in terms of income distribution right so it says uh there has to be a guarantee

that money is able to fulfill its important role in the economic system and that monetary policy can help growth and income distribution agree disagree so the income distribution piece is is interesting. I, as a free market capitalist, that really does not resonate with my economic principles. And I don't, you know, I see that more as a socialist view to economics, which is certainly not one that I think represents the values of the United States, which is interesting because he's representing the global central banks. And I'm not sure if that really is the right approach for every single member of the bank of international settlements well that that's a theoretical argument right i would just go to the practical argument that says if that is the goal

it obviously hasn't worked again because there's the highest level of income inequality we've ever seen that's right and so yeah theoretically they can want income distribution or equal income distribution but they're not getting it yeah but by printing more money through quantitative easing or other programs, you are distributing income. You're injecting money into the system. They're controlling where those injections are going. So it is impacting the financial system. It is impacting who has access to that money first,

which is not really the people who need it, which is where the kind of funny thing with Ben Bernanke as the helicopter money, just dropping money out of helicopters. I'll steal a quote from somebody. I can't remember who said it, but the original airdrop, I think it was Don Wilson that said that, which is kind of hilarious. But yeah, the Fed does have, and central banks have, an incredible power in terms of who has access to that money first.

And if we're really trying to empower the economy, how do you effectively do that? And we can certainly spend a lot of time criticizing these programs. Second quote from Mr. Carson's, I am concerned by the pace of technological progress. In principle, it's a positive thing, but when innovation hurdles ahead, it can be destructive, for workers in particular. The challenge lies in using innovation to our advantage while containing the damage it causes. Here I'm thinking, for example, of the impact of information technology and finance, fintech, on, say, the business models and ultimately the stability of banks and other financial institutions. He's essentially talking about disruption. Yep.

Right? And he's concerned that disruption can occur by applying, quote, information technology in finance or this fintech. It's kind of a point of disruption, right? Well, it's the whole point of innovate. Why do people innovate? Why does innovation happen? If people see a more effective, a better way to do something, they see a problem with the system, you're going to have people who step forward and propose something different to fix those issues.

Innovation is how we improve ourselves. So to take such a negative step on innovation, it really baffles me because you would think that people at the very top of that hierarchy would say, yes, please give us all your best ideas. How can we be better? How can we improve? And they're discouraging that, which is, I think, will ultimately not play well for them. Yeah. Well, we'll see.

The third quote, quote, it is important to draw a clear distinction between the underlying technology, such as blockchain and cryptocurrencies per se. The technology may have useful applications, but producing money is not one of them. end quote. So it was Aristotle who first defined the characteristics of money. He said money has to be divisible, portable, divisible, and have intrinsic value. Central banks later redefined what money is to be a unit of account, a means of payment, or a store of value. So there is a lot debate about what is money and i think that's one of the most exciting things that's happening on the global stage where people are really starting to question how does this work and the more people educate themselves on the monetary system i think we'll actually get to better outcomes because i

do think there's a lot of challenges with these systems i don't think the system works for everybody and i do think blockchain technology is going to play a huge role in improving our financial and our monetary system in a very positive way uh so i think it's important to talk about what money is uh you know bitcoin does have challenges in terms of being a method of payment people aren't really using it as a method of payment i would argue it's actually the government's fault because we tax it as property therefore it cannot behave as as money they did the same thing with gold and silver so you know gold and silver was actually what was outlined in in the Constitution to be used as money, and because they tax it as property and as a commodity,

you have a capital gains or a loss on every single transaction, which just makes it completely unfeasible for people to use in their daily lives. So I think the government has actually driven that behavior, and it's possible virtual currencies and cryptocurrencies would potentially operate as a method of payment if we had the proper rules and regulations that allowed for that use case. funny how aristotle was uh way way ahead of his time yeah yeah for sure and he was right and for thousands and thousands of years civilizations have flocked to gold and silver mostly gold and even just 75 years ago the united states was on a gold standard that was you know the

britain woods agreement you think about it at britain woods the the world came together to redefine how the global monetary system would work they said gold was going to be priced at $35 an ounce. The U.S. dollar would be the world reserve currency. All other nations would peg their money to the dollar and they could legally demand gold from the U.S. treasury. That was 75 years ago. That was not that long ago. And it was just a couple of years after that. It was impossible to maintain the peg. The entire system completely broke down by the 80s. And we all moved to these floating exchange rates to what fiat currency is today. So it is really quite amazing just to think about how much the monetary system has evolved in just a few short years. And now

with all these advanced technologies, whether it's AI or blockchain, the internet, think about how much more money is going to evolve in the future. So I think innovation is exciting. And I think it's really important that central banks, including the Federal Reserve, really understand this because they do play such a huge role in the way our economies function. And we don't want to see massive disruptions, that's going to be bad for the people. And in order to stay ahead of that, you have to be ahead of these technological advancements and blockchain being probably the most meaningful. One of the most important, absolutely. The last quote, quote, central banks are trusted and that trust is something they have built up over decades and for which there is no

substitute right now. Trust is the valuable commodity. It is easily destroyed, but winning it takes time. Money has become established. Young people should use their many talents and skills for innovation, not reinventing money. It's a fallacy to think money can be created from nothing. Literally like a spit take right there. So it's a fallacy to think money can be created from nothing. I mean, that's literally what central banks do. So I'm just I'm even just confused as to what he's trying to prove here. But to tell young people that they should not use their many talents to innovate with money is just. Well, so let's take this step by step, right? So first of all, he says central banks are trusted, which I would argue that's not even true.

Well, then the very next the very next part of the speech, he says, well, there was this well-respected book that talks about all the secrecy at the Bank of International Settlements. And of course, a lot of the activities at central banks are not known to the public. And so what's so cool about blockchain is you don't have to trust it. It's just math. It's algorithms. It's software. It just works. You can audit it. You can verify it for yourself. You don't need trust. So even this idea of trust is completely being radically transformed through innovation. And I think these roles of these central banks and the economic powers that be is going to change a lot. And what the idea of trust is and how it works, we're really pushing that as a community onto what those limits are.

For sure. My favorite part is when he says young people should use their many talents and skills for innovation, not reinventing money. And the two things I think about is, one, that would insinuate that he believes Satoshi Nakamoto is a young person, which maybe they're older than him, right? Who knows? And then two is I cannot think of a bigger innovation than reinventing money if it was an improvement on that money. Yeah. Right? and so yeah can you imagine if tim cook just said hey you know young people we we figured out personal computers personal computers are established there is no need to innovate we got

it like we would still be stuck using yeah it's crazy it's crazy like this this logic you would not use this in in anything in any other industry i personally want to go back to the apple computers that uh had the clear the colorful designs on the back yeah we had one of those growing up put one of those in your backpack and i remember just being like what the hell is this thing uh awesome what uh where can people find out more about the chamber and kind of what's your your pitch to them in terms of why it's important to uh to support you guys and become a member so if you uh want to be a part of growing this ecosystem, regulation and policy is one of the biggest barriers to the adoption of digital assets and blockchain technology. And the Chamber of Digital Commerce

is a dedicated organization to provide professional resources to impact positive public policy, a smart public policy for this space. As a nonprofit, we do not sell any products or services. Companies are invited to be a member of the organization. As a member, you have access to the resources and the benefits that we provide, but you're also contributing to the important policy work of the organization. You can check us out at digitalchamber.org. And we also host an annual conference. So we'll be holding the DC Blockchain Summit, the fifth annual summit on March 11th and 12th at Georgetown University. So most of our members come in from all over the world to be a part of that conversation. We have a really nice academic setting to have

conversations about some of the most important issues impacting this space. We'll have different regulators, members of Congress who will come out and participate in the conversations. And it's a great opportunity to learn, but to also be a part of the network at the Chamber of Digital Commerce. Pretty compelling. I got three questions for you before I let you go. What's the most important book you've ever read? Uh, so, uh, the libertarian Bible Atlas shrugged would be my, one of my favorites. Why? It, uh, it really just kind of takes the, the, the ideas of, of capitalism and puts it into, to everyday life. And it really challenged a thought process, uh, back then. And it's turned, uh, it's, it's played a huge role in impacting the way businesses and policy

makers think about um free economics uh aliens believer non-believer yeah absolutely so uh so when i worked on capitol hill i had the opportunity to meet a lot of astronauts you guys can't see him but he's laughing his ass off in the corner met a lot of weird people working in government uh uh yeah but every time i've had the opportunity to meet anyone who's actually been to space i always ask i actually always ask them that question and every single one of them have always said yes the astronauts always say yes yeah yeah so uh my latest research in the alien quest is uh there are um let me if i remember this correctly there are 10 000 planets for every one grain of sand oh my gosh that's unbelievable that's the latest

estimate so cool 10 000 planets for every grain of sand and i think it's like 10 to the 22nd power or something which is way above my head in the mathematics world but when you think about that like they gotta exist absolutely it's all right we're gonna get a we're gonna get a um meter in here and we're gonna put it on the podcast on the video uh as to how funny joe thinks things are we're just gonna have like a like a dial that goes up and down because he's just sitting over there in the corner just dying laughing um all right you could ask me one question to end this thing what uh what do you got for me uh so my question for you i'm the bitcoin halving what what are you expecting to see and how are you preparing for that

well i always answer this question now in a very matter of fact way i'm expecting that the monetary supply of bitcoin is going to go in half yeah yes we know that so like there's a lot of people who well there's a lot of people who like forget like that's an important thing right like that has to happen if for some reason there was a bug or something like if that does not happen there are major red flags but my expectation is that the code is going to execute how it should execute and there will be having in the supply now the question that you're getting at is like what are the ramifications of that happening um and for me i don't think there's gonna be a lot of change, right, in terms of what's happened in the past. And mainly it's because supply and

demand economics haven't changed either. And so if you think about how supply and demand works is if you change the incoming supply of an asset, right, and all of a sudden it becomes harder or more expensive to get that asset and demand stays constant, there should be a gradual rise in price. Now, if you couple that change with incoming supply with a drastic increase in demand at some period of time, then there's a massive increase in price in a very short period of time. I tend to think the latter is more likely than the former, but either way, when you change something so fundamental in a very basic economic principle of supply and demand, there is going to be a movement. um what i always call out as well though is like there are some things that are different now right so there's derivative products allow people to go short there's a lot more scrutiny on this thing etc and so it doesn't have to play out exactly but from a framework standpoint or a systematic

standpoint supply and demand economics still apply right and so this whole idea of like is it priced in is it not priced in like what like who cares all i know is that supply demand economics are valid. And there is no one on the planet that's going to convince me that if you change the supply of something, whether that is total supply or also incoming supply, that there is not a change in the price. And of course there is. And so look, we're going to go through this in five months. There's going to be a bunch of debate over the next five months. I'm not going to participate in any of it. And we'll see about 18 months afterwards. We're going to end of 2021. We'll see who's right yeah right but to me it's pretty clear so we'll see yeah it's gonna be a big year

what do you think is gonna happen uh well i think on the demand side we've seen a ton of scrutiny over this space and you're now seeing you know heads of state heads of central banks they're actively coming out and saying all sorts of negative things about bitcoin so is that going to impact demand. Is that going to change the dynamics of this halving versus the ones that have happened previously? You know, I think we'll likely see an increase in price, but the price of Bitcoin is so irrational. Anyone who says they understand the price of Bitcoin, I think is just lying because there's so many things that go into it. Can we get a price prediction from the chamber of digital commerce all right guys i tried i asked um stick to policy remind us of

the url one more time people can go find you guys digitalchamber.org all right where can people find you on the internet on twitter etc i'm at perianne dc on twitter i threw the dc in there all right perianne was just taken so at perianne dc that's fair uh thank you so much for coming to do this We'll have to do it again later in the year, kind of as things progress. But I think a lot of people really see, you know, the important work you guys are doing. So just from all of us, thank you so much for doing this for the last five years. And you guys, you got a lot of support from us and other people in the industry. Awesome.

Thank you. Hey, everyone. Pop here. If you like this episode of Off the Chain and want to help us take crypto to the top of the Apple, Spotify, and other podcast charts, please do us a favor and rate, review, and subscribe. to review simply go to the off the chain homepage scroll down until you see the five blank stars taking 15 seconds to fill those stars in and leave a quick review goes a long way in helping us

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