The Wolf Of All Streets - Ex Coinbase Lawyer Explains Crypto Regulation | Hailey Lennon, Partner At Anderson Kill

Episode Date: November 25, 2021

Members of the crypto community love to talk about regulations and laws in crypto, yet very few of us are actually experts. Hailey Lennon came on the show to explain the current state of crypto regulation and dispel some popular myths. It is her belief that we need regulatory clarity to foster the historic innovation we are seeing in the crypto world. Must listen. -- Arculus: Arculus is the new crypto cold storage wallet that combines the world’s strongest security protocols with an easy-to-manage app. Store, swap, and send your crypto all with a simple tap of your Arculus Key™ card. Order the safer, simpler, smarter crypto cold storage solution today at: https://thewolfofallstreets.link/arculus -- Kava Kava connects the world's largest cryptocurrencies, ecosystems and financial applications on DeFi’s most trusted, scalable and secure earning platform. Kava lets you mint stablecoins, lend, borrow, earn and swap safely and efficiently across the world’s biggest crypto assets. To learn more visit https://thewolfofallstreets.link/kava -- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe. This podcast is presented by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworks.co ーーー Join the Wolf Den newsletter: ►►https://www.getrevue.co/profile/TheWolfDen/members

This podcast is sponsored by Kava and Arculus. Stay tuned for more information about both of them later in this episode. What's up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, and this is the Wolf of Wall Street's podcast, where two times every week we talk to your favorite personalities in the worlds of Bitcoin, finance, music, art, sports, politics, basically anyone with a good story to tell. People in the crypto community and the media, we love to talk about regulation and the law and how it relates to crypto. The

problem is none of us generally understand the law or regulation. So luckily we have a guest today who understands both of those things and has been working in this space for quite a long time. Haley Lennon is currently a partner at Anderson Kill, but she was on the regulatory teams on the legal side for Coinbase, Bitflyer, Silvergate Bank. So it's fair to say she knows what she's talking about and can offer us some great insight on what's really happening with regulation and on the legal side of cryptocurrency. Haley, thank you so much for taking the time. Thanks for having me. Nice to be here. So listen, as I said, this has sort of been the hot button topic for a very long time, what's happening. And I think the most compelling story has obviously been the infrastructure bill.

We saw it sort of go through the Senate. There was some pushback. It looked like maybe there was going to be a compromise, but now it's gone Senate, House, back to the Senate and gone into law with the original language. How much should we be concerned about that? So I think it just makes the jobs of working groups and attorneys in the space more difficult, but I think there still is a solution there. So the issue we now need to do is really try to define what companies can comply with these taxation and reporting requirements and what can't, and start to sort of clear that legislative intent through potentially litigation or however it needs to unfold. So it just kind of makes everyone's life a little more difficult. It would have been nice if the language had been pushed through in a clear manner.

I think the industry is always struggling with things that are not clear. Regulation that's a little uncertain, a little unclear. So I don't think it will be any negative impact on the industry long-term, but it just makes everyone's lives a little harder. Right. I found it very interesting, actually, that the crypto provision, which was clearly an afterthought, was the singular thing that basically froze the bill

for three or four days. I even sort of joked that it was a huge advertisement for Bitcoin that was unexpected. It seems like enough people maybe get it now in government that we'll see it fixed because I think a lot of people don't realize it's still two years away, right? It's not like this goes into law today

and all of a sudden these companies need to move offshore. We have a lot of time to fix this and already are seeing Lummis and Tumi proposed bills to fix that language. Yeah, I think there'll be a lot of time to fix this and already are seeing Lummis and Toomey proposed bills to fix that language. Yeah, I think there'll be a lot more discussion, a lot more clarification. And it is exciting to see so many regulators and government officials involved in conversations about cryptocurrency. I agree with you. Even when it's regulation that seems burdensome on the industry, if you're getting a bunch

of high-powered people in DC in a room talking about cryptocurrency, I view that as a good thing long-term for the industry. Do you think that we need to form a lobby, PAX, I mean, really put together the political infrastructure to make this happen that any other industry generally has? Yeah, I mean, we have a lot of amazing working groups in DC.

So the Blockchain Association, I mean, we have a lot of amazing working groups in DC. So the Blockchain Association, Coin Center, Association of Digital Asset Markets, those three come to mind, but there's a ton. And they do great work in this space. I think that other companies are starting to look at having more formalized sort of lobbying efforts. And I do think that that's important. I mean, it's becoming such a big industry with such a big market cap. It really can't be ignored. And regulation allows me to have job security. And it's just, I mean, it's always the conversation, right? Like no matter what the topic is, if you start talking about these really cool, innovative concepts like DAOs and NFTs, there's always these legal regulatory questions that pop up. And tax will always be a part of that as well. So I do

think that those efforts are important. And I think we're going to continue to see growth in those areas. Right. You just brought up DAOs, which is one of my favorite new topics. And probably we talk about crypto as the Wild West. That's got to be the most fringe Wild West right now that we have for regulators and legal. And we just saw Constitution DAO formed in an attempt to buy a copy of the Constitution. Of course, they lost Ken Griffin from Citadel. But is that the form that you think we may see some of this political action and government governance starting to take shape in the manner of DAOs? I'm not sure about that. I mean, I think I think the concept of a DAO is really interesting. I think there's still quite a ways to go in terms of just understanding how DAOs can sort of represent the industry as a whole. So, I mean, I think for now we have these working groups that are sort of focused on those efforts in D.C. and have those connections in D.C. already.

And I think that that's probably where we should stay for now. But, I mean, at my law firm, Anderson Kill, sometimes we talk about this idea of how do you represent a DAO? You know, who is, who would the conflicts check be against? Who would you follow up with if a bill isn't paid? So there's these sort of like these very boring logistical questions around DAOs that still need answering, I think, before we'll start seeing a huge influx. And Wyoming is effectively already treating them like an LLC. Do you think that that's the best sort of equivalency that there is at the moment? Yep. I mean, I think that Wyoming's taken good initiative to understand

some of these very, like you said, sort of fringe innovative concepts. And I think that that's one way to do it. I'm not sure I really have the best proposal on how to regulate DAOs. But I think that that's one way to do it. I'm not sure I really have the best proposal on how to regulate DAOs, you know, but I think that the industry in general really struggles with getting to that point of decentralization where it's truly decentralized, where you truly have an organization that's decentralized or an exchange that's decentralized. I think that we're still an exchange that's decentralized. I think that we're still working on that as an industry. Yeah, I think that reasonably most likely we'll see things that are mixed, mostly decentralized with a bit of sort of centralized governance or something, because it's almost impossible to imagine something truly decentralized getting past regulators or operating in the United States under that maybe maybe I'm a bit pessimistic on that. But just looking at the way that they seem to treat things, that seems like the more

realistic outcome. No, I agree. I mean, I think what what I've thought for many years is that FinCEN, these different regulators aren't going to just say, OK, you're you're a decentralized exchange or a Dow. You don't you're an ICO, not an IPO, you don't need to comply with the regulations that are already in place and other companies are already having to comply with. So I think we are going to see a little bit of that struggle with regulators allowing something to be out of their purview.

Right. And even some of our biggest decentralized companies, Unisw Right, and even, I mean, even some of our biggest decentralized companies, Uniswap, for example, I mean, they have offices in New York City, right? They're not, they have to sort of have that sort of structure to even be able to operate in this country. And I don't think that that's necessarily a bad thing at all. I'm actually really curious how you got into this space

and into Bitcoin in the first place. Obviously there's a million avenues you can take as a lawyer, and this is a pretty small niche. Yeah, it's what I'm really happy about, because I started my career as a commercial litigation associate at Gordon & Reese. And then after pretty much just my first year, I thought, this isn't setting my soul on fire. This isn't making me want to rush to the office every day. So I wanted to go down more of a financial technology path, but I really didn't know what that meant or, and it wasn't really crypto specific. I joined a company called Dollar X that did wholesale currency exchange along the Mexico border. So the struggle that we have in crypto of companies not being able to get

bank accounts, of anti-money laundering concerns, of money transmitter laws, all of those apply to traditional money services businesses like an exchange. So along the Mexico border, there's little costa de cambios, little exchange centers that can't get banking relationships. So what Dollar X would do is be the compliance filter between the exchange centers and the bank. you know, the hundred million dollars in pesos and transport it in an armored truck. So that was the first time I got thrown into anti-money laundering rules and actually seeing what, how traditional finance is working along the borders. And it seems so archaic and seems so funny to have, you know, these huge armored cars with like physical bills in them. But it also got my piqued my interest about financial technology laws and regulations. So I was there for a while. And then Silvergate Bank was also based in San Diego. And they found my resume and said, you

know, what you're doing for the banks, between the banks and these exchange centers, that's what we need someone to do here to determine what kind of crypto companies we should be comfortable banking. We don't know if Kraken has a good program or Coinbase has a good program or Gemini or all these exchanges, like if we actually are holding their customers' funds, are we opening ourselves up to a ton of money laundering risk? And so that was like my, I had heard of Bitcoin. I think I still hadn't, I definitely hadn't bought in yet. And I was intrigued, but it seemed a little bit like,

I think the first time anyone hears it it maybe takes a little bit of time to catch on um and I just sort of like I don't understand like the like who made my question at the beginning was always like who made this and what why why would people start using this and like like, how do you actually have it? You know, all this sort of like ownership type questions about it. But anyways, when I joined Silvergate and started to see all these like amazing companies in the space doing things and different sort of like FinTech interfaces that were interacting with them, different software developers and hardware developers, my mind was just blown. So it was Silvergate that really just opened my eyes to what the industry actually looked like

and how accomplished a lot of these companies already were. And that was back in 2013, 2014. Oh, wow. Yeah. I mean, Silvergate Bank is still a leading banking partner in the space for crypto companies. And when I joined, they pretty much had one exchange they had onboarded. And they said, we know why we're comfortable with this exchange, but it's not a process that's repeatable. It's not really documented the way our regulators would want to see it. So pretty much my first year was creating like a repeatable process for a bank to onboard crypto companies and determine their risk. And if they could sort of pass that test to get a bank account. And so in our first year, we grew from like zero one company to about 75. And then I last I saw Silvergate banks up to banking about 450 companies in the space. So so it's been really awesome to see. And they've really banks were a big issue for companies for so many years and still are really. And I think without Silvergate's initiative

there, the industry really might not be where it is today because so many banks would just shut the door on, you know, even these huge exchanges and not provide banking accounts. So seeing as we still lack a lot of regulatory clarity, obviously, how many of those 2013-2014 issues that you were trying to solve at Silvergate at the very beginning still exist today? All of them, I would say. I shouldn't say that. So back at Silvergate, one of the main issues we were dealing with was exchanges needing to get state by state money transmitter licenses and the New York Bit license. That regime still is in place. But companies do have other options like Wyoming Special Purpose Depository Institute, institution. Yeah, Kraken, different trust charters, they can get even the OCC made some mentions last year about their trust charter and full charter. So companies do have a bit more optionality there. The other issue that was going on

that didn't exist back then was this ICO SEC oversight question, because at Silvergate Bank, all these companies were only dealing with Bitcoin. And it wasn't until I got to BitFlyer, which is a large Japanese exchange that was launching here in the US, did all of a sudden the Howey test and the issues with what tokens people could launch and getting approval from New York DFS for specific tokens on a token by token basis, all of that, those issues started to arise. So pretty much every year, there's maybe one or two more issues that arise, but the, at the core, like the anti-money laundering and the money transmitter license issues that we were dealing with at Silvergate, these companies are still having to deal with and still having to maintain those licenses. So the next logical question is, are those actually legitimate

concerns that regulators should be worried about? I mean, is money laundering a huge problem in crypto? We obviously hear that from the sidelines, but I think when we're in it, we think that, no, it's sort of FUD and nonsense, but there has to be some truth to it, I would imagine. Yeah. So, I mean, there's anything that can hold value can be used to money, to launder money. So anything that holds any value can be used to launder money. But what people misconstrue or what the media tries to misconstrue is that because Bitcoin is anonymous or private or new and sneaky that people that criminals are rushing to Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies instead of cash. There's no evidence of that. Like there's not some tidal wave of money laundering issues coming into the crypto space. And what's funny is actually a lot of times blockchain technology and some of the companies that work in the space

actually help law enforcement and DOJ and things solve issues because there's a ledger that shows movement of Bitcoin and where as with dollar bills I give you a dollar bill and no one's going to know about that handoff so but at the end of the day, does a company like a Coinbase that takes someone's dollars and gives them another form of cash, like should they have an anti-money laundering program? Yes, they should, because a bank does, a traditional currency exchange company does. It just wouldn't make sense for them to not be to not want to sort of um prevent the onboarding of someone who's connected with illicit activity um that the problem is that that's not a popular opinion in the crypto space um satoshi nakamoto is anonymous and part of the goal of cryptocurrency

is to get the government out of our money, right? And like, get financial privacy back. So I do think that there's this balancing act that we've that we've been in the industry have to find a balance so that we can continue to grow and like see our full potential and full adoption in the industry and in the US, but still try to hold true to some of those values that cryptocurrency offers, including financial privacy. I mean, I love that balanced opinion because we have this sort of cognitive dissonance, all of us, I think, in the crypto industry, we're like cheering institutional adoption and, you know, hooray, microstrategy and Bitcoin ETF. And then we're like,

but get the government out of our money, right? And you can't really want one without accepting the other. No, I mean, I have come to really love the ideals that cryptocurrency presents, including the financial privacy. And there is a balancing act there. There are times when I don't think the government should have as much access to our financial information and be all in that. But if you go to a Coinbase and you want to buy $10,000 of Bitcoin, I think handing over your ID when you do the same thing for PayPal, I think it unfortunately has to be that way for now. Right. And anyone who's deep enough down the crypto rabbit hole, I think knows that there are other options if they don't want to go that route, probably. They find a way if they want to. I'm not endorsing that by

any stretch, but there's plenty of platforms and ways if you don't want to use Coinbase. That's the irony of it is like the most heavily regulated exchanges and these centralized exchanges that have so much regulatory oversight, the bad actors aren't going there, right? They're not, they're doing other things. So, um, but then when we talk about more government oversight of, of things like unhosted wallets, then that, that starts to infringe on the financial privacy that people want and deserve. So that's sort of the balancing act that I am talking about. But I mean, I personally don't want to work in an industry that doesn't make some sort of efforts to ensure that the technology we have in place has some sort of checks and balances on what it's being used for.

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you know, money transmitter licenses in each and every state and KYC and AML. It's no wonder that a lot of companies just see the United States and say, I'm not going to operate here, right? Who wants to go through effectively getting, you know, clarity in 50 separate states on top of just the country when they approach doing business somewhere? It seems nearly impossible.

I mean, it's, it's impossible. It seems impossible. It's really expensive. It's really time consuming. So for a startup that wants to get into this space, I mean, you, you would really have to have about 500K that you are willing to spend on that process. And that's just not like sort of within a startup's budget. So I do think, you know, we, for, I mean, the theme of stifling innovation has kind of become this like overused term. But in that situation, I think regulation does do that because you can't expect everyone to have that much money to put forward to just launch a beta project in the US.

So yeah, I mean, at Bitflyer and at Coinbase and even now at Anderson Kill representing companies, a big part of my job is really overseeing the regulatory relationships that these companies have with the 40 states. They have to have money transmitter licenses and New York Bit license. New York DFS is sort of its own beast of regulatory oversight. And then, yeah, you go to the federal level and you're looking at FinCEN, OFAC, SEC, CFTC, IRS. I mean, it's like every regulator you could think of. And then people still think of it as unregulated. And I'm just.

It lacks regulatory clarity, but it's like the most heavily regulated industry there is. Right. And the most aggressively tax industry there is. And the most aggressively taxed. I mean, it seems to me when I came in in 2016, 2017, the idea was you can trade all this stuff. It's tax free. Nobody's paying attention. Completely untrue, by the way, but that's what people believe. And then you dig in and actually start calculating your taxes if you're trading or moving coins around. And it's extremely aggressive. I mean, you're being taxed on transactions that would blow people's minds if they really dug deep into it. Do you think that we'll get more favorable tax treatment or do you think that it's going to always sort of remain

this aggressive? I think that it can change based on the administration. I do think that the government loves to tax and, you know, that's the way they get money from us is taxation. So I think and I think that there's a bit of almost like hostility towards the crypto space, right? It's the sort of industry that's trying to challenge traditional finance and inflation and all these concepts that the government then has to kind of like look at and think about, well, are we really doing things the right way? So there, I think there might be a bit of that. So I hope with time that it's, that it's

taxed in a more reasonable manner. I agree. I think it, you know, oftentimes if I'm like trading or selling, I actually am trying to calculate the tax beforehand, because it's just like, all of a sudden, you're going to have things you owe and have to sell more to pay it. Right. And you haven't realized it's dollars. I mean, your average person who's like, cool, you know, listen, people come into this space, and they like buy SHIB or something, right. Something that maybe not the most savvy investor would. And then they're like, I want Bitcoin, sell it into Bitcoin and don't realize that they now have a taxable, you know, transaction in dollars that they've never realized it to. And I think it's just over so many people's heads.

I think we all have friends who have had major tax bills on gains that they never realized when the market's gone down in certain years. And it's a terrifying story. It really should not be that way. No, I mean, the thing is, is the purpose, if you talk to any regulator, part of is what happens when a regulator whose duty is consumer protection is actually harming consumers. And I think we see that sometimes with all the different regulators. But, you know, especially I've been having conversations lately about the SEC and some of these enforcement actions. Like oftentimes the consumers who have been harmed never see that outflow of cash from the company, you know, and sometimes the fines don't make any sense compared

to what the company's actually made. You know, it's just like a drop in the bucket. So, and the same thing I think applies to some of these topics like taxation. I mean, why aren't we promoting individuals growing their own personal wealth? You know what I mean? Dollar in, dollar out. Just go from dollars into the crypto space. When I come out, treat it like a Forex exchange and all of a day. It's so easy. And that's the thing is so, you know, regulators define crypto, every regulator defines crypto in a way that benefits them and allows them to have oversight, right? So if you think about it, we have FinCEN, which is under the Treasury saying this is that the exchange and the movement is money, and it's money transmission. But then the IRS also under the treasury is saying, but we're going to tax it as property and do it as capital gains tax. It's like, you have to like, at some point they're going to have to find, to meet in the middle there,

because everyone's sort of getting the worst of both worlds. Yeah. I give that a decade at best before we get any sort of clarity on that. And, you know, sort of this feeling that certainly from Gensler in the SEC that maybe everything is a security, right? If we haven't defined it yet, pretty much go ahead and assume that we're going to make it a security. How is that a benefit to consumers, right? You just said that the idea is that they're supposed to protect us, but it seems not even just in crypto, that generally they're just preventing opportunity. Yep. I think that's fair. I do. And I mean, I think there are individuals within the SEC who

are trying to propose things like safe harbors. We are seeing that there's even sort of a conflict, I think, within the SEC about how to regulate this space. And sometimes I don't even think the SEC quite knows where they're heading or what they're going for. You know what I mean? So with some of the enforcement actions that are public, some of the enforcement actions that I'm working on confidentially within my practice, sometimes it's just really not clear what the end game is with the SEC. And I do think that, I mean, I think we're in a position where the SEC really could justifiably go after most projects, which is just terrifying, you know, and exchanges that list most projects. I don't know if they'll do that. I don't, because I don't understand their strategy of enforcement really,

but it does feel as though Bitcoin is the sort of cleared crypto. It's not a security, it's commodity. You know, Ethereum, I feel like they've, you know, sort of danced around. Pretty sure it's not. Yeah. But, you know, well, anything's possible. And so, yeah, I mean, I think I'm really interested in the, you know, the litigation going on against Ripple about XRP, I'm hopeful that we'll get some sort of either law or just clarification that we can rely on as attorneys and point to. But for the most part, my law firm is very conservative when it comes to representing sort of specific token projects. I imagine you have to be, right?

Because that's the tone that regulators are giving, at least publicly. Do you view that ripple case sort of as the weather vane for every other project down the road? Like, is what happens to ripple going to dare I say ripple effect? I didn't mean to make a pun, but we'll have a ripple effect down to all these other projects. I think I definitely think it will have an impact. I, you know, the difficult thing is that some projects I think view this space and and think, as long as I'm not the slowest one running from the bear, I'll be take. That's not an approach I would have a client take, but some companies have different risk tolerance, and that's the direction they go. But I just think that the litigation will result in some sort of clarification if it goes all that way. And that's something I'm interested in. I think that companies will need to look to that. But the difficult thing is the SEC really has said

when you take the Howey test and you also take their guidance on the applicability to digital assets, it's such a fact-specific discussion that companies are going to be able to say, well, we never marketed ours like that, or we never did that like that. So it's still not going to be totally clear. But the thought of using a test from the 1930s to apply to new, entirely world-changing technology is such nonsense in the first place. I mean, even them talking about, I mean, stable coins being securities, right? I mean, but there's no expectation of financial gain from a stable coin. It's nonsense. And a lot of it really is across the board. You said before, obviously, let's take the worst case scenario. Everything's a security and that's the path that

they take. I hope it's not the case. I don't think that will be the case. But you said, obviously, these projects could have, you know, sort of retroactive legal implications for operating the exchanges that list these projects. Is there a risk to your average individual? This is a question we don't get much clarity on. You know, if you've been trading it, if you bought something that in theory wasn't allowed to be sold to an American on Uniswap or, you know, OTC or something like that? Is there any risk to your individual? I've spoken to lawyers before who sort of say it's not the onus is on the company, right? But maybe there's another opinion there.

Yeah, I mean, it's a good question. It's one that I haven't sort of dug deep into. But I mean, so I'd say that there's obviously a range of risk, the highest is on the company itself, the project itself, the exchanges that list it, but also sort of the team involved. So that's partly why attorneys and CPAs and other professionals are worried, because the SEC has pretty much called us gatekeepers. Like we're the gatekeepers of this unclear regulation, which is not something I really want to be. But that's also why lawyers need to be conservative. But when you get down to the individual level, where I get more worried is about individuals who are like sort of like influencers or promoters of the tokens.

The individual purchaser themselves, I don't picture having any sort of legal risk, but it's more financial risk, right? Like depending on what happens with that token, the value, if they actually see any of like the disgorgement from the company. So, you know, but, but I'm also all, all of our conversation aside, I'm a huge proponent of a sort of free market. And so if individuals, you know, everyone, every company and every individual has sort of their own risk tolerance. So my, the way I view it is our job is to give the best advice and ensure that companies and clients aren't, you know, ever committing crime or doing anything that crosses any sort of lines. But at the end of the day, there's business decisions that need to be made by clients. And there is gray area.

So yeah, we're still so early. It'll just be really exciting to see where all this goes. That makes perfect sense. You worked at Coinbase. So one of the most sort of egregious oversteps or just aggressive approaches I've seen the SEC take yet was when Coinbase approached the SEC and said, listen, we have this 4% lend product that we want to offer. Obviously, there's BlockFi and Celsius and Nexo and Voyager. They're all doing this. The SEC says, hey, everybody, come talk to us. Open doors. And then the SEC says, don't launch it. And if you do, we're going to litigate, right? We'll sue you. How can anyone operate in that environment? The product exists, right? It exists. It's being used by consumers and companies all around the country. They were

offering actually lower rates and probably something safer for the consumer. They approached the SEC directly as they were told, and they were threatened with a lawsuit. Yeah, I mean, I can't speak to their sort of conversations or, you know, experience there. But I think that regulators are, in some ways, almost feel like up against a wall with this technology because it's moving faster than they can. And so I think when they have sort of

the ability to say no, sometimes they do. And regulators are also notoriously sort of tight lipped about their rationale because they don't want to put in writing or even say to a company where we would sue you because of this, this and this um i do think that when the these projects that are sort of non-banks are are in a way sort of taking taking deposits and providing a yield from it i think that there it there does need to be some sort of oversight there and i think that the sec probably just doesn't know what what their oversight should be or what's going on to be honest so i mean i i feel for coinbase and companies that are dealing in this space because that really is um a lot of times you get told no by a regulator and they're not that willing to explain

why. And that's super frustrating. I mean, when I worked at Coinbase, I saw the efforts of the product attorneys and the projects that work on these. And then all of a sudden to have my role at Coinbase was more regulatory counsel. So to go talk to the SEC, CFTC, like New York DFS, and not this lending product, but for others, if the answer was sort of no, or we need a ton more information, it was just always sort of a, I think, a frustrating process for the product people that are just super passionate about like rolling something out.

There's that sort of pushback from the regulatory side that can slow it down. Sure. We're kind of talking about the worst case scenarios here over and over again, obviously. It's easy to be pessimistic. What would be the best case scenario for regulation in the United States? Well, I mean, I was really excited when Brian Brooks was at the OCC. I thought that the idea, so in other countries like Bitfire in Japan or Europe, there's more of a singular regulatory body that oversees everything. And so it would sort of be like combining the New York DFS, SEC, CFTC into just one sort of primary regulator. To me, that's more of an ideal because for companies that are having to answer to all these different regulatory agencies, there's just so much time and effort that goes into that. I mean, if you think about

a company that has 50 state money transmitter licenses and the New York bit license, once you get that, that also means you have to maintain those licenses. You have to get your under, under examination requirements. I mean, most companies have auditors on site from these different States almost year round, and you're just constantly having exams. So my, like sort of my hope is that we just start to have a more centralized regulation of what the, what the technology is allowing people to do and not focus so much on what the technology is, you know, because it's just sort of an advancement of traditional finance. So I think, I mean, I feel, even though we have talked about sort of some of the negative in regulation, I do feel positive about the direction we're going. agencies that are starting to get orange-pilled and starting to understand the value.

We're seeing other countries like El Salvador make it legal tender. I mean, all of this stuff, it's already been 10 years, but that's a ton of progress. I mean, it's crazy, really. And we've started to have individuals in the U.S. say that they'll never ban cryptocurrency. Like even some of those little comments mean something because, you know, five, six years ago, people were still asking, could this just become illegal in the U.S.? You know, I mean, marijuana is still legal on the federal level. So I think we're in a actually a good place and have made a lot of progress. I agree. And it's good to hear that there's some optimism,

because I think it's easy to get caught in the pessimistic side. But the true fact is that we're here, we're not going anywhere. And that means we've advanced the ball far enough to even be on the regulators on their radar, right? And so I think that we will get sensible regulation with time. We won't like all of it, but I think that it will be sensible, we'll be able to operate. But one of the other huge aspects, let's take away from legal and regulation for a moment, because I know that's not all you do, right? You started a company called Crypto Connect. I'd love to hear you talk about that a bit more. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, so we launched Crypto Connect, I think it's been about two, three months. The idea behind it is really a it's a women led organization that helps with professional development and networking.

But the organization is open to everyone. And part of that is really going back to the ideas of cryptocurrency. I view the technology as open to everyone. And so I wanted an organization that represented female leadership, but was that a resource to anyone in the space or looking to get into the space. So what we've done is launched in 12 major cities. We launched a few months ago and we were in the midst of having our first round of meetups in those cities. So New York, LA, DC, San Francisco, they're all on our website, cryptoconnect.org. And so what we're really trying to do is create chapters in these different cities. And we'll be launching in 12 additional cities next year. And we've all already started to have a lot of interest in international expansion. So we're

talking about that. But the idea behind it kind of came from my own personal frustration with in this sort of like post COVID or COVID era where people are moving around a lot and not people aren't centralized in offices anymore. I was really having to like turn to my Twitter and to figure out who was where. Hey, I'll be in Nashville this weekend. Who wants to get a coffee? What company should I meet with? And I was like, this is so frustrating that there's not sort of like an umbrella organization that can help serve as a reference to other Bitcoin or crypto meetups that already exist in those cities, other events that are already happening in those cities, but also like eventually maybe list the main crypto companies

that are based in those cities so that people can just have more of like tap into a community right away when they move or when they travel. So that's the ultimate goal. And yeah, I think me and the rest of the founding members were super excited that the industry seemed to really get excited about it and view it as a really cool initiative. And so we hope to put on some more sort of educational things in the next year and eventually host like a nationwide conference. We haven't decided location yet, but.

Inevitably, it ends up in Miami. We all know that. Yeah. I don't think it's going to bring. I mean, I'm in California. Groceries would be nice. Yeah. I don't think it's both rings. I'm in California. Yeah. I'm in California. Yeah. Sure. Well, that makes a lot more sense for you, certainly. Yeah. I'm like, it's all about me. How do you confront the tribalism in the space when you're actually trying to bring everyone together, you know, and you get the maximalist of each project

coming? Or do you find that people are generally willing to hang out and talk to each other and build the crypto community as a whole? Yeah, I mean, so far, these events have been so great. I mean, I've been really excited to see there is sort of just naturally there's tended to be more diversity at the events, not just gender, but just diversity in general. I thought a lot about how to sort of brand this group because I didn't want gender to be the topic of conversation. I didn't want crypto versus Bitcoin to be the conversation. I didn't want any of it to be like the divisive conversation. I wanted it to be, hey, we're like this awesome community. And on Twitter, I feel like you feel that for the most part.

There is sort of this tribalism. I personally try to stay away from that. And so this is sort of like putting crypto Twitter into the real world, right? And like allowing people to meet their contacts and people they follow and like on Twitter. So events so far and we'll have our final four in San Diego, Denver, Nashville, and Austin in December. So if anyone's in those areas or nearby, they should join. Part of it is that the organization is free to join and be a member. The events so far, we've been able to get sponsorship and have those be free of charge. So, yeah, I think people just appreciate the opportunity to meet like-minded individuals. So it's been awesome so far. I never thought I'd be like the founder.

I never thought I'd form a company like this, never thought I'd be, yeah, form a company like this, but it's been awesome. That's very cool. It's a great initiative and certainly can only help. So do people go to the website to sign up for that? Is that the best way to do that? Yeah. So we, cryptoconnect.org, there's a sign up where you can choose what city you want to be affiliated with. We also have a Twitter handle that both we promote events that way as well and send emails to members about events. You know, this is our first year, our first round of events. So we're kind of learning as we go, but we're, we, we, we had, I think about 600 signups day one, which was crazy. And, and the emails I get from people all over the world, just blow my

mind. I mean, I, I tweeted a few pictures of them, because it's just like, everywhere in the world, you could think of Australia. I mean, I just was blown away by the interest in it. And eventually, my hope is that people can start taking initiative and becoming the city lead where they're located. And this can become like a decentralized organization. Sure. Totally organic. Yeah. So, so that's the direction we're going. Super passionate about it. It's just, I, I, I love this space and I love the people in it. And I, you know,

I like that people have their differing opinions and different personalities and Bitcoin maximalists and whether other coins, you know, and so I think, I think the whole industry is just awesome and entertaining and I like, I like bringing, bringing people together. So it's been a really exciting project. Right. Bring the conversation full circle. I think that the infrastructure bill was the first time that I saw everybody come together, regardless of

their tribe, maximalism, the project they love to sort of fight against a common enemy, so to speak, at that time. So I think that gives great hope that that can happen when it's really, really important. I think so. If the goal is the growth of the cryptocurrency industry rather than just a single project, I think that collaboration is always the way to go or at least having respectful discourse. So I try to stay away from anything that's not that. Yeah, I always joke that no matter what you think of Ripple, since they're so polarizing, obviously, you still kind of want them to beat the SEC. It's a really great example. And I do think that in the end, everyone will come together when they

need to. So where can everybody follow you after this conversation? I know where they can obviously sign up for Crypto Connect, but how can they keep up with you and what you're doing? Yeah, I'm pretty active on Twitter. I try to keep it light and funny, but also post regulatory updates and things. So my handle's HaleyLennonBTC. That's H-A-I-L-E-Y-L-E-N-N-O-N-B-T-C. And I also write for Forbes part time. So I'm regulatory analyst at Forbes and you can check out articles on the website there. Try to, you know, keep things up to date and just kind of make things digestible for people and keep the legalese out of it. So hopefully it's helpful. We all need a little less legalese, right? Yeah, I do too. I'm quite sure that that's true.

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to have this conversation. It's great to get, like I said, boots on the ground, someone who really understands what's happening with legal and regulation instead of just sort of our media hot takes and the FUD. So I look forward to catching up with you again down the road to have a conversation

about how this has evolved. Awesome, thank you so much for having me.