The Wolf Of All Streets - How Crypto Becomes A 100 Trillion Dollar Market | Perianne Boring

Episode Date: July 3, 2022

Legislators and regulators are fighting incredibly important battles in Washington D.C. that will determine the future of Crypto. Guest Perianne Boring, the founder of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, is leading the charge and working directly with policymakers to encourage mainstream adoption of blockchain technologies. She explains why we should be working alongside those policymakers, tells us about the positive regulation shifts she’s seeing, and illustrates exactly what YOU can do to help. JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER 📩 https://www.getrevue.co/profile/TheWolfDen EPISODE LINKS Perianne Boring: https://twitter.com/PerianneDC Production & Marketing Team: https://penname.co/ FOLLOW SCOTT MELKER • YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/scottmelker • Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wolfofallstreets • Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io • Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe • Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3FASB2c

If we want this industry and we want this technology to impact billions of people around the world to really reach its potential, we've got to figure out how to make it usable and accessible and safe for just normal people. And that's an educational thing. So that's kind of the next kind of phase of work that I'm thinking on for the chamber. Let's go. The most important battles in crypto are being fought on the front lines in Washington, D.C. with legislators and regulators. Perry M. Boehringer is the founder of the Chamber of Digital Commerce and is doing the hard work to educate our legislators and our regulators on why Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are so important and why we need to keep all of that innovation onshore. This is the topic of the moment. You do not want to miss this. We were just talking about the fact that you've been to every single consensus and probably

convention ever, which means you were really, really early. I'm a professional conference attender. But it means you were also really, really early. How did you first find Bitcoin and crypto? So I first learned about Bitcoin in 2011. At the time, I was working on Capitol Hill. I politically am very much libertarian leaning. And when I was working on the Hill, I was fighting for things like audit the Fed and Ron Paul's bills to bring more transparency to our monetary policy. One of

my friends just said, hey, I found this Bitcoin virtual currency. I think you'll think it's interesting. And I did. So being able to learn that there's this virtual currency out there that was not controlled or owned or created by a government or corporations or a group of people. To me, that was just fascinating. So I just started learning about it early days. I followed it on my own for a number of years. And I eventually just came to the conclusion that this is the most important technology I'm going to see in my lifetime. And I had to be a part of it. What's interesting is that most people I think who founded had this ethos that it was supposed to be very separate from politics and separate from government. You're in Washington working on this actively.

So how do I guess how do you square those two together? Yeah. So, I mean, I think I look at this really from from a realist perspective. At the end of the day, the government does exist. They control a lot of things. And if you don't follow them, you can cause a lot of problems for yourself and your company. So my perspective is we're going to get a better outcome if we're working with policymakers and just putting our heads in the sand and pretending like they don't exist. So I think you know, I think it's, it will have

a better outcome from being a part of the process than not. So like, you know, one of the things we say is, you know, either you're at the dinner table or you're on the menu in DC. So I would rather be at the dinner table than not. I think we could agree with that. I would have to imagine that for the first few years you were working on this, you were probably banging your head against the wall. Right? It seems like we always, every time we have the,

first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then they win. We say that almost on every show seemingly, but it feels like they were laughing at us for a really long time. Well, actually, first they were just ignoring us. Right, of course. But it feels like the last few years they've been laughing,

but all of a sudden there's been this major shift to where it's a serious part of the conversation. Yeah, absolutely. From a policy perspective, where I see where we are today, I think we can say that most policymakers have accepted that digital assets are here to stay. This is not going away. This is not a fad. And now where we are in the regulatory process is building the regulatory frameworks for businesses to be able to build and invest in this ecosystem. So there's a very large body of work underway in Washington and other power centers of the world defining what those regulatory frameworks are going to look like. And how did the Chamber of Digital Commerce come to exist? So I'm the founder. We launched in 2014. 2013 was really the year that the idea for the chamber

came together. I was covering the space very closely. And there were two really big things that happened in that year with Mt. Gox and Silk Road. Both of those created a very large regulatory response. And I was following this and watching this very closely as someone working and living in D.C. in the public policy space. You had three hearings on Capitol Hill that year about the dangers of Bitcoin. The SEC issued a warning about how dangerous this technology is. Fenton issued guidance putting forward the AML, the anti-money laundering requirements for companies in this space. And all of this is happening and there's no one from the Bitcoin space. Back then it was really just Bitcoin.

You didn't have this entire ecosystem like we do today. There was really no one there in D.C. communicating with our government officials and our public servants about what was happening, what happened in Silk Road, what happened with Mount Gox. What was all over the news was that Bitcoin had died. Of course, that's not what happened. But there were no experts there to translate that and to educate our policymakers on what was going on. So the idea was very simple. It's just we need to have professional resources and our nation's capital to help guide the policymaking community and everything they're going to have to do and make

decisions on regarding digital assets. So we launched in 2014. And I wasn't really sure what was going to happen because back then this was a very, you know, a lot of people in the space in those early days were very anti-government. So we had a little press conference and there was a ton of people from the industry there. And I wasn't sure if people were going to like completely shut down this idea or embrace it. And really to my surprise, we've had so much support from the industry. I think today people really do understand that regulation is a big barrier to the adoption of this technology. And I think a lot of people are very serious about wanting to work with our policymakers to get a framework to help incentivize the further development of this technology. It feels like there's also been a shift in the perception from those policymakers,

which you alluded to before. But I remember even maybe a year ago, if they would invite Coinbase representatives or Sam to Washington, they would sit in front of Congress and basically just get screamed at, talking points and anger and sort of fun. And now when you see those same hearings, it seems like they're asking legitimate questions and are actually interested. Yeah. So I thought one of the hearings that was, to me, fun to watch from my perspective is in Senate banking earlier this year, you had Senator Elizabeth Warren, who came with some very prepared, like a scripted conversation. And she was interviewing a representative from Chain Analysis. And I think very publicly, she had displayed that

she did not understand how analytics work. She came with the perspective that there's a lot of risk around illicit finance to digital assets. And this was right when the whole Russia situation was going down. And there was a lot of talk of, is crypto being used by Russians to evade our sanctions? And of course, the data and what law enforcement as talent has told us is no, but she was under the assumption that there was. And so she had this back and forth with chain analysis. And he's like, no, this is what the data shows. We're not seeing that at all. And so she had this back and forth with chain analysis. And he's like, no, this is what the data shows. We're not seeing that at all. And she could hardly believe it. And I think that was a moment where I think a lot of policymakers who were skeptical because of whatever they read in

the media or maybe what some lobbyists told them that, well, you really need to understand this at a more technical level before you start making policy. Because there's a lot of myths about the risk of this technology that we've been working really hard to dispel. And that is illicit finance risk is a big one. It's a huge one. And now this is a very real issue. It's happening in real time. So has the mandate of the chamber evolved or changed at all? I mean, is it now like less about just information and education and more about, you know, real action? Yeah, so we're turning eight years old next month. And certainly our

work has evolved and matured as the industry has grown over the past several years. And in the early days, a lot of our work was very just educational based. We weren't really lobbying for any specific policies. There wasn't really the time for that. We're certainly past just the education phase. There are many policymakers throughout Congress and within the regulatory agencies that have a very deep understanding. And we're actually building regulatory frameworks today.

So that's how a lot of the work has evolved. But for me as the CEO of the company, what I'm focused on is how do we unlock mass adoption of this technology? What is the path to take digital assets and integrate them in the global financial system? So how do we go from a $1 trillion market cap, roughly where we are today, to a $10 to $100 trillion market cap? What are those big things that need to happen? And I think it's two-sided. One is the public policy.

We need clear regulatory frameworks for digital assets. That process is well on its way. And I think the second one is education and really thinking about the consumer. If we want this industry and we want this technology to impact billions of people around the world to really reach its potential, we've got to figure out how to make it usable and accessible and safe for just normal people. And that's an educational thing. So that's kind of the next kind of phase of work that I'm thinking on for the chamber. Yeah, when you said education, I was thinking, and also UX, UI, right?

It's just too complicated. It's very tucking. Your grandma's not opening a MetaMask wallet and writing her keys down. Not my grandma. I don't know. No ways, right? I don't think. But you really addressed it.

It is about the education, but it also just has to be at a point where maybe you don't require a complex education to use it, right? We use our phones, we use the internet, we don't think about how it works. Hopefully we get to that point with this asset class as well. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've gotten a lot of questions around the whole Terra debacle. Of course. And, you know, to me, it was really difficult to read and learn about all of these these just retail investors who had put everything they had into what was a very risky project. And they lost everything. And then they were, you know, you know, their lives were pretty much ruined because of that. You know, at the end of the day, I think that's an investor education issue. 100 percent because they thought it was safe.

They thought it was safe. That's the problem. It's one thing to gamble and lose your money and that's your responsibility. But when you somehow have the perception that it's totally cool, this thing's stable, I'm going to just make 20% indefinitely. Yeah. And, you know, an issue that comes up over and over and over again for us with policymakers is consumer protections. Policymakers generally do not believe there's appropriate level of consumer protections in the digital asset space. And something that's very unique about the digital asset industry to other markets is this huge retail base of investors. So I do think our industry does

have a responsibility to think about that. And that could be something that's self-policing, a self-regulatory type approach to make sure consumers understand what's considered safe and secure versus innovation with a different level of risk. Do you think that Luna set us back at all with regulators, or do you think that they understand the difference between that asset and potentially a backed or collateralized stablecoin? Well, I don't know if there's any policymakers today that could really explain to you exactly how Taraluna functioned and could put forward any type of regulatory framework that would have prevented that. At the end of the day, algorithmic stablecoins are very, very different than fully collateralized backed stablecoins. The mass majority, if not basically all of the policy conversations around

regulatory oversight for stablecoins is focused on fully collateralized stable coins. So I think it raised more of the priority of moving that type of regulatory recommendations forward. But as of today, there's not really any efforts to truly regulate algorithmic stable coins. I mean, I would have rather not seen Janet Yellen on TV talking about Luna in real time the day that it happened. I mean, I saw that and I was like, this doesn't feel great. Well, the other one was a funny story. So President Trump was the first president to tweet about Bitcoin. And of course, he didn't say positive things at all but but the way that you know trying to have a little bit of like

humor and in the work that we do you have to have some comedic relief at some point was well at least you know he knows we exist so we printed them out we put them in gold frames and we hung them in the office and we call them the crown jewels of the office but that really is a good point because we were easily dismissed before and simply having short politicians. But then it also trickles down to celebrities and your average person and all the way down to your barber and your Uber driver. Now, I think there's a general mainstream awareness that this exists

and it's real that did not exist maybe even a year ago. Yeah, I agree. And I think that that is probably the biggest testament to how far we've come along. But still, I think there's a fear that improper legislation or regulation could stifle this dramatically, especially in the United States. Are you optimistic that we will get sensible? I'm incredibly optimistic. I mean, at the end of the day, there are going to be winners and losers in the regulatory process. So there is a process that has already started to build a comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets.

You have the Lummis and Della Brand legislation that was just introduced earlier this week. That was the most substantial legislative proposal ever put forward for this space. It has bipartisan support. And then you also have President Biden earlier this year signed an executive order into law that started another process where you have all of these federal agencies involved in putting together a coordinated approach for how we're going to address digital assets from a regulatory perspective in this space. So there's a whole other body of work coming out of the EO. So this is happening. At the end of the day, I do believe having a robust regulatory framework where we can give

businesses clarity, that is the number one thing we hear from our members as to why they're not growing or what their biggest challenge is, is just regulatory certainty. So once we have that, there'll be an opportunity for a whole new level of entities to be able to build in this space. Is it going to be perfect? No, it's not. There will be winners and losers in those conversations. But again, we're really, we want to see the mass adoption of this technology. And a part of that is building those regulatory frameworks. And ultimately, I think it'll be one of the most important developments for the growth of the space. How much chatter do you hear about a central bank digital currency? It's like every day. It's something a lot of people are very, very interested in.

And there's a huge degree of just disparity between the stakeholders. There's a lot of stakeholders in the creation of a U.S. CBDC. So you have Congress, you have Treasury, Fed are the made ones. And then the attorney general was tasked with making a recommendation around, does the Fed actually have legal authority to issue a CBDC? So this is ultimately likely going to be something that Congress will have to give the Fed actually have legal authority to issue a CBDC. So this is ultimately likely going to be something that Congress will have to give the Fed authority to do. The Fed kind of is already underway of researching and starting to build around in this space. But this is going to have wide implications and there's a lot of people who are

very invested in that process. It won't happen fast then? No, it's definitely not going to happen fast, if at all. Yeah. I would bet my money on if at all. Honestly, I think it's pretty unlikely. Well, the Fed has this payment system called FedNow and the big joke in D.C. is we call it FedYesterday because it's been so, so long just to roll it out. So if that's any indication of kind of the next big tech product, I don't see this moving fast. And the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, has said many times that it's much more important that we get this right than we do this fast. We're not trying to get too far.

I do agree with that. You only get one shot at something like that, I would imagine. I think there's a sentiment in general, not specific to crypto, obviously, among the American people of disillusionment with the political process. And I think a lot of people feel like they've either opted out or they're just underrepresented. But are there things that your average person can do who's a crypto enthusiast, who's passionate about this to actually affect any sort of change? So I think something that everybody can help in

is education. At the end of the day, that is our biggest challenge, especially when we're discussing very complex things in this space is you can't really discuss the policy for a particular piece of the industry if you don't understand how the technology works. So anyone who's either an enthusiast in this space or who's building a business in this space, we encourage you to make relationships with your elected representatives, your local, state, and federal representatives. Go tell them what you're doing. Make sure they're aware of the jobs you're creating,

what you're building, and give them an opportunity to learn and understand about this technology so they're just that much more prepared when they have to vote on something or when they have to address regulatory issues related to this space. Do you think that we're becoming a large enough part of the population to be a legitimate force to be reckoned with that now politicians have to say 10% of my constituents,

20% of my constituents care so much that I'm at risk of losing my job if I don't address this? Yeah, we're getting there. We're certainly getting there. In the executive order, it stated statistics that as many as 16% of U.S. households own some form of cryptocurrency today. So the White House recognizes that. And ultimately, the government is a reflection of its people. And so when you have a large amount of people invested in this space and a part of the crypto community, you're going to see that reflected in our elected representatives as well. Love it. Well, thank you so much for your time and for all the work that you're doing. And I think now is pretty much the moment probably for everything that you've been building for eight years. So I think the world is watching. Thanks so much, Scott. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you haven't already left a rating or

a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please do that now. Spotify just added ratings. So please go ahead and click that five star. I'll see you guys next time.