CNBC had a couple cryptocurrency experts as guests on Squawk Box earlier today. They had an interesting conversation around bitcoin regulation. See video below.
Check out clip from CNBC below, we’re also including the transcript in case you can’t see the video. All rights belong to CNBC and please refer all credits to CNBC.
my question. Is this less about the tax issue and Mme. Or about the regulatory,
issue that’s come up via libro by our conversations with Steve Mnuchin, Treasury secretary recently, who basically, by the way, said he doesn’t want own Bitcoin five years forever?
and the fact that there was a G seven meeting where Crypto was a huge topic?
Is,
there any anxiety,
that you have that at some point the G seven were to come together and say, You know what? Actually, guys, we don’t this whole Bitcoin thing or other CRYPTOCURRENCIES like it,
where it’s a little bit harder track where some of the fundamentals behind it actually are, are about actually undoing the monopoly. That Fiat currency has were actually just going to make it very difficult in G seven countries for you to actually get even getting on ramp, even get onto a coin base or what have you and what that therefore does to the value of this?
Well, let’s be very clear. I was in the house last week testifying in the Liber hearing, and one of the things I really wanted to make clear is Bitcoin has been regulated in the United States for the last six years. The technology and the network itself are a public good, much like the Internet. You can’t really regulate an open software network, but all of the company’s building on top of Bitcoin are regulated based on the facts of what they d’oh. So the way the IRS got the information of all of these crypto holders is through John Doe summons. It sent coin Base about three years ago. They asked for a lot of information on about twenty thousand coin based account holders. Now, coin based being a well capitalised company, was able to go to court and minimise the scope of that request. But again, people who live here in the United States, as Secretary Mnuchin pointed out, You have to follow the rules and laws of the United States. If you are a business that is in the business of holding customer funds of enabling, exchanging, trading, buying and selling of assets, you’re responsible for providing your customers with ten ninety nines the same way any other business would. And anyone who holds Bitcoin should know I had a coin based credit card for a while. I did all of the cap gains on all the little transaction cited. It’s it is a tax all activity. I mean, the rules don’t change just because you’re touching Bitcoin.
But you don’t see this as a long term issue. I mean, Mohammed and I’ve actually talked about this in terms of the monopoly that governments have over Fiat currency. And long term, if this were to ever get to sort of an escape velocity kind of situation, where really,
becomes, ah, massive mass adoption, that governments actually then step in, by the way, in the same way that for reasons that are almost inexplicable to me, there has been such a focus on Libera,
even though it doesn’t even exist yet.
Yeah, I think you got to remember that. You know, look, you can pay your business taxes in the state of Ohio with Bitcoin, right? There’s been countries who have settled cross border transactions in other countries. In Bitcoin,
Fidelity is building infrastructure to support Bitcoin. Right? I don’t think that Bitcoin is gonna go away. I think that there’s too many people whether they’re regulated financial organisations, Finneran’s approving et.
cetera. It’s going away. I’m just wondering whether, as a protocol,
you know, whether it’s like Torrente Torrente, we all thought was gonna be a huge deal ten years ago. And now it’s one of many particles. It’s fine,
But look, it’s like cash, right? Cash? When you have a twenty dollar bill and you get it out of the M, nobody contract what you do with the twenty dollar bill. If you go down the cornering, you buy a hot dog, right? Same thing with big point.
When I had that debate, that is,
you have to get a lot of briefcases. It becomes very complicated. Teo carry around lots and lots of cash. It’s very, very easy. Obviously?
you seen that casinos are?
sure you you heard of the booth cash? Are you finally got him? But cash argument,
to me as a species argument, given,
everybody given the various sea,
off, big corner, any kind of electronic transfer relative to.
cap that.
get. The three,
important part is that the countries that embraced this first we’re going to have a significant advancement for the game theory is that some country is going to embrace us and a very, very sick whether it’s China, Russia, the United States somewhere in Europe or South America. Somebody’s going to do it in the first countries that does it for the first couple, the advantage becomes, what? Because you can’t stop it, right? And so the second that a country starts to adopt it, every other country’s gonna end up playing catch up, right? And so the countries that say Look at Singapore, Singapore, saying Bring it on right, we’re going to provide rules. We’re gonna give you clarity. We want these companies here. We want the innovation. We want the entrepreneurs to come in when you incentivise them. There’s a way to create rules that are fair.
They’re regulating it right with the United States is saying is you can have big coin so long as you play by our rules. And I agree with your point, Andrew, that one of the most important things for a lot of hard core Bitcoin er’s is that they have choice. They can choose what to do with their big coin, who to transact with who to interact with This whole movement is about eliminating our dependence on intermediaries. Right yesterday we saw another financial institution got happed hundred million customer records that were compromised right. We see large scale systemic risk coming from these large institutions. And so the idea of Bitcoin doing away with intermediaries is a good one. But in fact, we’ve become more and more dependent on intermediaries than ever. Just the fact that they were able to obtain so many user accounts from Klein base is a great example.
