Jay Addison Technical and Media Advisor for CryptoBiz Magazine interviews Perrianne M. Boring the founder and President of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, the first DC-based trade association dedicated to promoting the acceptance and use of bitcoin and digital assets to public-policy makers. Boring is a sought-after speaker, and author of the “Boring Bitcoin Report,” a popular industry blog. Prior to forming the Digital Chamber, Boring served as an economic analyst in network cable news. Additionally, she worked as a legislative analyst on Capitol Hill, advising on finance, economics, tax and healthcare policy.
Transcript
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foreign we're live in Las Vegas at the inside Bitcoins convention and we're here with Perry Ann boring the founder and president of the Chamber of digital Commerce Marianne how are you today I'm great how are you I'm doing great too thanks do you think it's possible to properly regulate Bitcoin in its current form well Bitcoin is already being regulated there's about 10 federal agencies that have jurisdiction over digital currencies that we're working with and then also all states have different jurisdictions over the industry as well it's very difficult to regulate such a nascent industry because it's so new with Bitcoin only being five years old there's really not a lot of Precedence set in the legal world for its industry which we're starting to see now we're seeing it with Department of Justice and the SEC the FTC all these agencies have brought cases against different Bitcoin companies so that's why it's extremely important to work with Regulators to educate them on what this is to make sure that these uh new Innovative Technologies are being regulated in a way that's fair to them in a way that doesn't hinder the technology what would an ideal set of Bitcoin regulations look like to you I think there's already plenty of Regulation out there what's most important is working with the companies that operate in this space making sure they understand where regulation is uh would apply to their companies we just saw last week the director of fencing did an interview with coindesk where she said it was unfortunate that there's exchanges that think that they're operating under the radar and some are thinking that this is going to foreshadow some enforcement action because they said that if these companies think that they won't start putting in compliance programs until enforcement happens they're willing to do that and it would be extremely unfortunate to see some of these companies brought down because they didn't understand where the law applied to them yeah that makes sense when the ndfs regulations finalize how close do you think it'll look to the first public draft directly with the Department of Financial Services to bring substantial changes to the proposed that license rules and regulations in its current form they would be very hindering to small businesses and startups and so we petitioned the department to extend the comment period which they did we're also going to engage with superintendent benlovsky on October 14th at Cardozo law school and we are putting forward different proposals of what we think State Licensing should look like and we will be applying a lot of pressure to the department to make changes that will not hinder Innovation but will set up guard rails and we also want to make sure that superintendent Ben loski does exactly what he keeps saying he's going to do which is set up guard rails but not hinder Innovation which unfortunately is not what we saw in the first proposal but we do believe through working with him and the industry together we can make sure that both the industry and the Department's goals are met Bitcoin evolves and moves extremely fast can regulation ever keep up with the innovation that's not traditionally how regulation is formed regulation always follows Innovation and it's always when Bad actors are abusing technology so anytime that value is being transferred in the financial services industry is very susceptible to hackers and that's when if companies don't have appropriate compliance programs set up so their company or their technology or their platforms are not being abused by Bad actors that's when we start seeing regulation comes in so this goes back to my comment I said earlier that our efforts with the Chamber of digital Commerce are working with the industry as well to making sure that they understand what laws abide to their company so we can preempt further regulation when you speak with the policy makers about Bitcoin what kind of understanding of the technology do they generally start with do you find yourself having to explain a lot of details we speak with a lot of public policy makers regulators and legislatures and we come in contact with people from all sides of the spectrum we held the first ever Bitcoin education day on Capitol Hill just a few weeks ago where we brought in about 30 different people within the Bitcoin ecosystem and we've briefed over 70 offices in the House of Representatives and the comments that we're getting are range from people who are extremely skeptical because they had heard of some of the scandals including Mount gox and silk road all the way on the other side of the spectrum of we met people that were mining Bitcoin that worked for the government so it's very interesting to see how through this Innovative technology how it's really spreading it's a peer-to-peer technology and it's reaching people in very interesting ways even in government people on Capitol Hill it's a lot of younger younger people that work there and this technology is very much catching the attention of the younger generation so it is extremely encouraging that a lot of the staff members of members of Congress are finding out about it through social media or through different outlets and and some of them actually have firsthand experience with the technology which is very encouraging that's for sure well what will definitely help with the education pushes that we're doing yeah you better why is it important to have an industry trade Association so the industry has formed formal representation the Chamber of digital commerce was the very first trade Association located and launched in Washington DC and it's important that we have formal representation because government is getting very very interested in this technology we are almost every single day working with the 10 different agencies or departments in the federal government all have working groups and are all looking into digital currencies and it's very important that they have accurate and reliable information especially because Bitcoin is open source and no one owns it there's no Bitcoin headquarters if the Department of Justice has a question on bitcoin who do they turn to there's not a Bitcoin headquarter so as someone that used to work for a member of Congress I worked in the financial services industry on the government side we often relied on trade Association for Reliable third-party non-bias information it's different with when a company individual company comes in to meet with the government is because they have a bias but when you have a trade Association Association and provides that degree of separation between the between the the company and the government and we represent the industry as a whole we have a very loud and very credible and the authoritative voice for digital currencies in Washington it sounds like you guys are doing some really great stuff it's fantastic thank you very much so one question January 2015 January 1st what do you think the price of Bitcoin is going to be this is a trick question we ask everybody oh I hate to speculate on price because what if it it's all over the range so you'll fit in with any price well also I'm not going to put a price point out but what I will say is that today the market capitalization is hovering around four billion dollars and for the industry to be taken serious it needs to put serious resources into Washington so if we even put one when thousands of the resources of the amount of the market cap where we are today we can help grow the industry into the trillion dollar range and one of our goals of the Chamber of digital Commerce is to grow this to a trillion dollar industry by 2020 and we will help provide those Resources by working with Regulators to provide the regulatory structure to allow this industry to thrive a special thanks to pyrian boring the founder of the Chamber of digital Commerce thank you you're welcome thanks for having me Jay Addison from cryptobiz magazine live from meckler media's inside Bitcoins conference in Las Vegas remember to subscribe to cryptobiz magazine at cryptobismag.com follow us on Twitter at cryptobizmag thanks for joining us and learn more at cryptobizmagazine.com