Janet Yellen, recently speaking at American University, made erudite, sensible remarks about the right approach to regulate digital currencies and assets, innovation and the policies surrounding them.
The U.S. Treasury Secretary noted the sector’s explosive growth from $14 billion to $3 trillion in just five years and its origins, even touching on the original Bitcoin white paper’s solution for preventing the same digital assets being spent twice, a key criticism of systems preceding Bitcoin.
Yellen said that “the government’s role should be to ensure responsible innovation – innovation that works for all Americans, protects our national security interests and our planet, and contributes to our economic competitiveness and growth. Such responsible innovation should reflect thoughtful public-private dialogue and take account of the many lessons we’ve learned throughout our financial history. This sort of pragmatism has served us well in the past and I believe it is the right approach today.”
Adelle Nazarian is the CEO of the American Blockchain PAC, which protects innovation in blockchain and digital assets in the U.S. and opposes legislation that limits the growth of crypto assets.
In a recent interview with the Huffington Post about crypto legislation, I observed that we needed new rules, language and a more elastic framework for initial coin offerings (ICO) consistent with anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) rulemaking that would ensure innovation could continue to flourish.
The American Blockchain PAC that I lead as CEO welcomed Secretary Yellen’s sound guidelines for a process of developing a legal and regulatory structure to protect the public while creating a climate that fosters innovation. As it happens, Rep. Glen “GT” Thompson (R-Pa.) has significantly advanced this process by proposing a thoughtful, well-formulated “crypto regulatory blueprint.”
The “Thompson principles” offer a framework for digital commodities exchanges, voluntary registration and qualified digital commodity custodians. They also offer an improved process to create digital commodities; to provide a full accounting of stablecoin assets and liabilities; to protect customers using stablecoins and register asset-backed digital commodity users. They would comply with and apply to pre-sold digital commodities.
