Based on the recent attention from regulators, cryptocurrency is going mainstream, but who is writing the rules and to what end? And how will these regulators view the difference between cryptocurrency and stable coin?

 

More on Era Anagnosti and Doug Landy.

 

SPEAKERS

Era Anagnosti, Wayne Stacy, Doug Landy

 

Wayne Stacy  00:00

Welcome, everyone to the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology's Expert Series podcast. I'm Wayne Stacy, the Executive Director for BCLT. And today we're going to talk about cryptocurrency and digital assets. In particular, we're going to talk about Washington's recent involvement and what we can look for in the future. To lead us through this discussion today, we have two of the nation's leading experts on the topic. We have Doug Landy who is I can best determine is head of everything at White & Case that involves anything financial services related, but specifically, he's head of the Financial Services Group and part of the US Bank regulatory practice. And then we have Era Anagnosti with us. She is a capital markets partner, and formerly served as the SEC's acting assistant director in the Office of Financial Services. So a unique insight into the SEC side of this discussion. So let me let me start with one of the the issues we saw coming up in the paper all week, and that was the US senate decided to include some cryptocurrency regulations in the infrastructure bill. So what's what's going on there, and why the infrastructure bill?

 

Doug Landy  01:25

Well, I can start the information in the bill was interesting. It was designed to combat tax avoidance, and make persons that play certain roles in crypto transactions act, similarly for taxation and reporting to other brokers for securities, or intermediaries for commodities or similar things. And however, the industry is very different from those. And there was no agreement as to who the proper intermediaries are, to provide that information, ultimately, be responsible. And that was really what happened in the bill, the bill was very broad, there was a compromise sought to limit the applicability of the requirements to certain entities that actually handle the information, and are less kind of developers and more information brokers. But there really wasn't an agreement as to who those people should be. And the bill still has the very broad provision in it, where it's going to the house now. Right? I think the industry is going to take another crack at trying to educate people about where the line should be drawn.

 

Wayne Stacy  02:37

Any predictions on on what's going to come out of this?

 

Doug Landy  02:42

Well I never predict politics, but hopefully, you know, this is this is an issue across the industry, how does one introduce regulation and structure into an industry that grew up outside of those things on purpose, and there are baby steps being done towards that. But Secretary Yellen has made very clear she feels there's a part of the industry that deals and tax avoidance and other bad things. And so she's very strong on wanting to use the regulatory structure, including the tax authority to really stamp that out as much as you can.

 

Wayne Stacy  03:26

Well, that's the legislative side of it. What's the SEC doing with with both crypto and digital assets these days?

 

Era Anagnosti  03:36

Yeah, that's been, you know, a very active area of the SEC, the SEC so far to date, particularly with a change in administration, we see th