At Consensus 2018 today, a group of regulators took the stage with Bittrex CSO Kiran Raj. It went exactly as one would expect. There were no new revelations. Only a lot of nice sounding talk about protecting investors without hampering innovation.
Which sounds nice. But as was the case in 2016 when I wrote about the Blockchain Summit in Washington D.C.[1] regulators are still taking a reactive approach and are ignoring what is coming down the pipeline.
In addition to Raj, the panel included Robert A. Cohen of the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), James McDonald of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Sujit Raman of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and was moderated by Steve Bunnell, Chair of Data Security and Privacy Practice and the interim Chief Legal Officer of Bittrex.
The first half of the panel was spent talking to each regulator and asking them what their authority covers and their focus. Virtually nothing they said was surprising. The CFTC is interested in Bitcoin futures and other derivatives. The FCC wants to encourage capital growth but also maintain fair markets and protect investors. The DOJ is interested in criminal cases. The SEC is primarily focused on issues of fraud.
All of the agencies stressed that they don’t want to scare off legitimate innovations and that making a good faith effort to comply by communicating with regulators will go a long way.
Raj, as the sole representative of the industry, stressed the need for clear regulations. He argued that most companies want to comply but with the various agencies and patchwork regulation that started in the 1940s, it can be difficult to understand what regulations need to be followed.
But, these regulations are solutions made for the past, that barely apply today and won’t apply at
