It is easy to think of the most prominent blockchain advocates as a united front, whose ranks are tightly closed in the face of the common enemy — a horde of fierce crypto critics, unwieldy regulators, anti-money laundering zealots, “bitcoin is a scam”-ers, and the stakeholders of the old, centralized financial system. On this battlefield, the crypto camp’s fundamental positions are aligned, and its strategic goals are clear. However, in the times of armistice, blockchain champions get together by the campfire to ponder the important details of their common cause, and — astonishingly — at times, they disagree.
This time around, the metaphorical campfire was lit at the MIT Technology Review's Business of Blockchain 2019 conference, which took place on May 2 on the premises of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab. One of the panels saw Caitlin Long — the woman who is spearheading Wyoming’s transformation into what she herself called the “Delaware of crypto law” — have a deferential yet rather intense exchange with Coin Center’s director of research, Peter Van Valkenburgh, one of the industry’s most eloquent speakers who is known for many notable deeds — for example, standing up for crypto to a bully last October.
The panel, which also featured MIT professor and former Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman Gary Gensler, was on crypto regulation, and the main point of contention was whether it is better done on the federal or state level. While they were ultimately concerned about the same thing — i.e., the backwardness of the United States’ regulatory environment that can chase promising startups away to more friendly jurisdictions — Long and Van Valkenburgh offered two drastically different visions of the best way to go about the issue.
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Topic: crypto advocates clash over regulatory approaches (Read 123 times)