Crypto Talks from CoinDesk

Regulation is a topic that makes many crypto enthusiasts sick to their stomachs, but CoinDesk's Aaron Stanley and Amy Davine Kim, the chief policy officer at The Chamber of Digital Commerce, take you on a whirlwind journey through a new set of rules governing crypto exchanges created by a powerful intergovernmental organization. 

This episode is sponsored by ErisX, The Stellar Development Foundation and Grayscale Digital Large Cap Investment Fund.

Government regulators call the standards for regulating cryptocurrencies that were published in June of last year, nicknamed the Travel Rule, just recommendations. 

But, really, they're not voluntary. They're rules every crypto exchange must follow or suffer the consequences. 

Released by the Financial Action Task Force, a powerful intergovernmental organization that focuses on combating money laundering and terrorist financing, these standards were the topic of conversation on the latest episode of CoinDesk Live: Lockdown Edition. 

During the conversation, CoinDesk's Aaron Stanley and Amy Davine Kim, the chief policy officer at The Chamber of Digital Commerce, had an exciting discussion on regulation (seems like an oxymoron). Kim outlined what the rules mean for crypto businesses and users alike as the deadline for compliance nears next month although Kim believes an extension might be issued because of the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic. 

Other topics include: 

• What's a FATF? It's the Financial Action Task Force and you need to be aware of its recommendations. 
• What do those recommendations mean for crypto businesses? Hint: More compliance. 
• Why have these recommendations proven quite complicated for crypto businesses to comply with?  
• What's up with the recommendations being nicknamed the Travel Rule? 
• Is this one of those QWERTY keyboard situations where it's the first and so will be used extensively even though it may not be the best layout? 
• How regulators are struggling to govern these new crypto systems 
• Why regulators are fixated on counterparties 
• Any cost/benefit analysis to assess the burden of the recommendations? 
• China's reaction to FATF recommendations
• How the COVID-19 crisis and subsequent lockdowns might affect FATF 
• Do U.S. exchanges have a leg up on complying with these rules? 
• Why the Libra "cryptocurrency" project, jump-started by Facebook, continues to get dragged
• Countries that are going about complying with FATF the right way and those that are doing it wrong
• Key FATF developments to watch
• Solutions that are being built to help exchanges comply with the recommendations 
• It might not seem like it but relations have improved between regulators and crypto companies 

Plus, there was some shameless, shameless plugging of our upcoming, completely virtual Consensus: Distributed conference, May 11-15, because the lineup is stacked! While you'll be able to watch our CoinDesk TV track through Twitter, you'll definitely want to register through Brella here to catch all our other amazing and interactive tracks, including the workshops track Stanley mentioned during the show. 

And there's one more CoinDesk Live before the big event. Later today, long-time crypto reporter Bailey Reutzel will be speaking with Felipe Duarte, who created a worksheet to help entrepreneurs build DAOs. It's just like you're in school again, but this time it's fun! Go ahead and register for that talk, starting at 4 p.m. ET, here.

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In our CoinDesk Live: Lockdown Edition series, CoinDesk journalists and virtual audience members chat with speakers from Consensus: Distributed, our upcoming virtual conference on May 11-15. 

This episode is sponsored by ErisX, The Stellar Development Foundation and Grayscale Digital Large Cap Investment Fund

On today's show, CoinDesk's Nolan Baurle speaks with the Ethereum Foundation's Hudson Jameson about private transactions, client improvements, dealing with FUD on Ethereum and more.

Listen in to hear more about:

• Community coordination in crypto means translating developers for users and users for developers. 
• Cat herders? It's as challenging as it sounds. 
• Ethereum culture revolves around travel and in-person events. How is the community adapting with pandemic-imposed lockdowns? 
• The decentralized nature of the ethereum - and broadly - crypto work force. 
• Possible pandemic-related use cases for blockchain? 
• Marketing ETH 2.0 - before or after full development of the protocol? 
• The "show, don't tell" ethereum application.
• Cross-trading assets between blockchains. 
• Everyone's favorite topic: SCALING. 
• Transparency within the Ethereum Foundation. 
• The attributes you need to be a great community manager!
• Blockchains, at least right now, shouldn't be used for voting. 
• Hudson's Hot Take: DeFi sometimes feels like it's being held up by toothpicks. 
• Competition between ethereum use cases. 

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“Hodl” has become quite the rallying cry in the crypto industry today. But to boost adoption, that might be the wrong trend. 

So says Carlos Acevedo, director of sales and the regional lead of Latin America for Brave, the crypto-powered web browser provider. In this episode of CoinDesk Live, hosted by Consensus organizer Stephanie Izquieta, Acevedo seemed to invoke the giving nature of early bitcoin enthusiasts such as Roger Ver, who would give away bitcoin to anyone and everyone he met. 

According to Acevedo, that's the best way to get more people interested in the technology. They’ll not only be interested from a price perspective but become more curious about how crypto could offer efficiencies and benefits in other areas of their life. 

For people in lower-income communities that are unbanked or underbanked, it’s introducing a whole new concept of finance they didn’t have access to before.

"The movement is so small but so, so powerful," Acevedo says.

Listen in to hear more about: 

• Acevedo's work building the Crypto Community Project in the Bronx (N.Y.) and his broader crusade to help the unbanked 
• What he learned what interests students during his time as a teacher 
• The missing topic in young people's education about money - personal finance 
• What has the largest impact on a person's scholastic success? 
• How to use Brave and its Basic Attention Token (BAT)
• Monetizing your attention 
• The Brave web browser and, specifically, its crypto rewards functionality as a gateway drug for going further down the blockchain rabbit hole 
• How crypto could help push people out of poverty
• The fork that allows you to use Brave just like Google Chrome; why would you ever go back to using data-extracting search engines? 
• Crypto stimulus

Next up: 

Join the next CoinDesk Live videocast on Thursday, April 30, with our guest Hudson Jameson, Ethereum developer liaison and DevOps engineer, who will be speaking about the second-largest blockchain's roadmap, plus countering the FUD. 

Then, of course, join us at Consensus: Distributed May 11-15 where all the guests you hear on CoinDesk LIVE will be speaking in more depth. 

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In our CoinDesk Live: Lockdown Edition series, CoinDesk journalists and virtual audience members chat with speakers from Consensus: Distributed, our upcoming virtual conference on May 11-15. 

In this episode, CoinDesk managing editor Zack Seward and business reporter Nikhilesh De speak with Magdalena Gronowska, who lost a couple thousand dollars when Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX imploded. She's now a member of the Official Committee of Affected Users and the Bankruptcy Board of Inspectors. 

QuadrigaCX is one of the stories in crypto that'll end up getting made into a movie; there's been so many twists and turns, and there still remains mystery, after the exchange's CEO, Gerald Cotten, unexpectedly died (although some believe he faked his death) on a trip to India in late 2018. He was supposedly the only person that held the keys to some $190 million in user funds – a pile of money that has been in dispute ever since. But once Canadian authorities started their  investigation, it became clear that Cotten had also mismanaged client  funds in many, many ways. 

It's been a little over a year since Cotten's death was reported, setting off  a whirlwind investigation, and Gronowska gives insight into where the case stands today.  

Topics include: 

• How much it sucks to lose bitcoin when you're trying to stack sats.
• How the Committee of Affected Users operates.
• The role of the Bankruptcy Board of Inspectors.
• The craziest thing QuadrigaCX's now-deceased CEO Gerald Cotten bought with his ill-gotten gains.
• Would you rather be a MtGox creditor or QuadrigaCX creditor? 
• NDAs: what the committee knows and doesn't know.
• How the crypto community's sleuthing actually helps the case.
• Brass-tacks questions from creditors.
• Not your keys; not your coins.
• Everyone's favorite: regulation. And the silver lining to the QuadrigaCX disaster: Canadians, both the crypto community and the government, thinking harder about crafting appropriate regulations. 
• Another industry where tech, maybe even blockchain tech, could be beneficial: Canada's insolvency system. 
• What happens next? 
• $40 million CAD has been retrieved. Where does that money go and how will they recover the rest?

Next up: 

Sign up to join the next CoinDesk Live on Tuesday, April 28 with Carlos Acevedo, founder of the Crypto Community Project, which is dedicated to educating low-income communities on crypto and blockchain.Acevedo is also the director of sales and the regional lead for Latin America at Brave. 

And then, of course, join us at Consensus: Distributed May 11-15 where Acevedo will be speaking.

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It's tough out there for a blockchain startup trying to raise money. 

Not only has interest in crypto and blockchain projects tapered off some over the past year or so of declining coin prices, but traditional venture capital has pivoted to focus on funding businesses that in some way overlap with the new normal of lockdowns, remote work and public health crises.  

But the blockchain space has proved itself innovative as it relates to sussing out hidden capital. (Remember the ICO boom? Doesn't that feel like a decade ago?)

In our livestream series reboot of CoinDesk Live: Lockdown Edition, CoinDesk journalists and virtual audience members chat with speakers from Consensus: Distributed, our first virtual conference May 11-15. 

In this episode, CoinDesk business editor Zack Seward speaks with Aaron Wright and Priyanka Desai of OpenLaw, a company that plans to launch a for-profit DAO next week. What does that even mean? Digging into the structure of this new limited liability autonomous organization, dubbed The LAO, is just one of the topics in this week's episode. 

Other topics include: 

• LAOs as the next chapter of capital formation
• Novel use cases for DAOs
• How non-accredited investors can get involved in The LAO
• Funding technology, such as privacy-enhancing tech, that traditional venture capitalists have been hesitant to 
• Tokenizing individuals 
• The continued interest in non-fungible tokens or NFTs 
• DeFi downside risk mitigators, like insurance, which are going to become more important as hacks and thefts continue 
• DeFi's open and participatory nature overlapping with broader internet trends 
• Rage quitting or redeploying your capital where it suits you 
• Governance whales 
• Limiting the consolidation of powers 
• Digital first work environments 
• DAOS for content creation 
• And finally: "There should be a bitcoin DAO!"

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Our digital personas are becoming the primary way we interact with the world, particularly during this worldwide pandemic. But we only see a tiny bit of the information being captured while we’re online, and we rarely know what our personal data is being used for. While the majority of our economy is related to our personal data, there’s no interface to help us understand what we actually look like to data collectors and their customers.

Welcome to a reboot of CoinDesk Live: Lockdown Edition, a livestream series in which CoinDesk journalists and virtual audience members chat with speakers from Consensus: Distributed, our first virtual conference May 11-15. 

In this kickoff episode, CoinDesk journalist Bailey Reutzel speaks with Alex McDougall of Bicameral Ventures about the data trails we leave behind when we surf the internet, and how users can take back some control of that data. 

https://twitter.com/CoinDesk/status/1250888281576914951

Bailey and Alex discuss:

• Free apps like House Party that collect our information
• Project MetaMe, Alex’s single sign-on mechanism that brings back all the data on other platforms, allowing people to manage and even sell it themselves
• Contract tracing, a necessary evil, or just evil?
• Is the Apple-Google solution the worst of all worlds, with an option to opt out as well as trusting mediocre data stewards? 
• As health data is clearly valuable to Google, many people simply don’t trust Google with their health data
• Pros and cons of these privacy tools such as DuckDuckGo, Brave Browser, Ghostery, Lockdown, and Loginhood
• The book “Surveillance Capitalism”
• Dystopian Fiction
• The book “Snow Crash”
• zkSNARKS for data
• How self-soverign meta-versions of ourselves might help protect us from “lizard brain” manipulation, by providing cleaner thinking versions of ourselves
• The book Alex is working on, “The Lizard and the Machine: Maintaining Human Integrity at a Machine-Speed World”

Alex McDougall on Twitter: @AlexM_Bicameral

Bailey Reutzel on Twitter: @BLR13

Next up

Sign up to join the next CoinDesk Live on Tuesday, April 21, with Priyanka Desai and Aaron Wright from The Lao as we discuss for-profit DAOs.

Then join us at Consensus: Distributed May 11-15.

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IBM's Suzanne Livingston speaks with CoinDesk's Nolan Bauerle about supply chains, the cost of food recalls, and what makes IBM's Food Trust unique.

Register for Consensus at Consensus2019.com

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Messari's Ryan Selkis (formerly of CoinDesk) and host Nolan Baurle discuss the importance of objective information and transparency in the cryptoasset market.

Ryan can be found on Twitter at @twobitidiot.

Register for Consensus at Consensus2019.com

Road to Consensus is a production of CoinDesk.

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Eric Piscini of Citizens Reserve tells CoinDesk's Nolan Bauerle that decentralized platforms are the #1 opportunity in the blockchain space.

Register for Consensus at Consensus2019.com

Road to Consensus is a production of CoinDesk.

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Seed CX co-founder Edward Woodford joins host Nolan Bauerle to discuss market data, manipulation, and fair markets.

Register for Consensus at Consensus2019.com

Road to Consensus is a production of CoinDesk.

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