Brian penny crypto briefing

Um, so it kind of made sense that way. And, um, but yeah, I think part of it is, is being able to focus now on the network side and not so much on the blockchain side, I think is. It's kind of like a superpower for, for us basically, right? Like we, we can shed ourselves of a lot of attention. I mean, even when you add people, like, you know, your attention is still dragged away when you know, there's firefighting and there's problems and there's things that you want to change.

Um, so it's not like you just add more people and the problem goes away. Those people also get distracted by, you know, L1 related things. And so I think being able to, to focus on, on what we do is going to be a, a huge win and freedom fi is a huge part of that because they, they bring with them this, this expertise set that we just didn't have, uh, internally and quite frankly, just didn't have time to, to, to learn.

It's fascinating to think about, um, that perspective too, like if you think of like, uh, like Rakuten in Japan, like they're, they're now a fully software defined cell phone network that's using ORAN and not relying on, uh, you know, single vendor lock in, and you kind of extrapolate that full and, you know, part of the, the success of, I think the helium I OT network was you could take a Helium brain and plug it into an existing LoRaWAN gateway system and suddenly, you know, all these devices would light up and be able to talk to the network and kind of stay online, and you can see kind of a future where, uh, you know, the, the 5g and cell phone carrier network has that same kind of multiplication effect behind it.

Um, but you know, I would say that's a, that's a topic we can dive into on another day. Is this, uh, just like an Ethereum merge processwhere we'll see it take three or four years to really come to fruition, or are we talking about a, a much more quick process here?

Amir: I mean, I would love to try and get it done by the end of the year. Austin: Um, it's a lot quicker than three or four years. I know everyone listening is probably, yeah. There's no, no chance of that. But, um, I, I think there is a chance of it. I mean, we we've been, uh, already spending quite a lot of time on the Oracle side of the problem, which, which I think is the most complicated part of the equation, which is, you know, moving proof of coverage and data transfer accounting off chain.

So sort of like untangling it from the L1. Um, to me, that's by far the hardest part of the problem. And, and as I kind of mentioned, we were heading down that path anyway. So a decent amount of work has already gone in there. So that, that makes me optimistic that there's a chance to hit that. Um, the Solana side of it, there's still a bunch of work to do there, you know?

So, so there's now three tokens in the Helium ecosystem. So there's certainly work to do on the Solana side as well. Um, but it doesn't, it doesn't feel out of the question to, to me that there's a working version of this by the end of the year. Um, and then there's some migration details to, you know, figure out, but we've already got a pretty good head start on that.

Like, I think on a test net somewhere, we have the entire ledger exported and imported as an SPL. Um, so you know, that, like I said, that was a hugely important part of the problem for us, was like, how do we make this like seamless to, to the user? And, and I think we've, we've successfully been able to prove that to ourselves. Um, there's also gonna be an airdrop of SOL tokens to all the HNT holders, um, so that they can cover, you know, roughly a hundred transactions worth of, of transactions.

Cause that was another concern coming outta the community is that, Hey, we need this like, even though it's a fractional amount of, SOL you know, people now have to like ,buy SOL or acquire it and a lot of, again, a lot of our users are not crypto literate in any way. Um, so making that easy for, for people I, I think is super important.

So now they don't really have to think about it. Um, and I expect once we sort of introduce them to the Solana world, they're gonna have a field day and start playing around with all kinds of other stuff. Um, but yeah, that, that's kind of where we're focused is like, how do we, how do we make this as seamless as possible?

Um, and make it such that, you know, an existing Helium user is just thrilled by the time it's done basically, right? Like POC works better. Data transfer works better. Transactions are faster and they have more stuff to, to do with their, with their HNT. So, uh, you know, if you're getting a hundred transactions worth, uh, unfortunately it's not exactly a down payment, but it's definitely enough to, to do a lot of transfers on the network and experience some of the, uh, you know, the fun things you can do in both Solana defi as, as well as just interacting with the ecosystem in general.

Well, Amir, thank you for coming on the Solana podcast. Thanks for having me look forward to, uh, hopefully being back sometime soon. We'll have to, uh, have you at Breakpoint as well to talk a little bit more about this. Pre-order the Saga now at solanamobile. Those who appear in the content may have a financial interest in any projects referenced, and any content herein is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice.

Anatoly :Hey, folks. This is Anatoly and you're listening to The Solana Podcast. Jason :Hey, how's it going? Glad to be here. Glad to chat everything we've been working on finally. Anatoly :Yeah. Me too. It's been kind of a crazy journey. You have an awesome background.

Do you mind just sharing it? Jason :Yeah. I've had a very, weird hardware background throughout my career. When I left Berkeley, I decided I wanted to go build something. I didn't want to sit in front of a computer all day. Well, my degree is in astrophysics from Berkeley. And then I went on to work on solar panels. And that was-Anatoly :Like Jason :What was that?

How did you get from astrophysics to hardware? Jason :So my senior year, my professor asked me to So they knew I had access to a machine shop and they wanted to make parts for telescopes. So I offered and said, "Hey, I can do that. And that was a lot more fun. At the end of the day, instead of having a program, I was like, "I have a thing. It's built. I wanted to build things. Anatoly :That's awesome. How did you get into astrophysics then? What was the reason for getting into astrophysics?

Jason :I just wanted to be able to say, I was It was a rocket scientist was the logic I had, year-old me had. Little did I know that wasn't exactly how that worked, but it sure sounded cool. And nowadays it just sounds really cool to say, "Oh, I have a degree in astrophysics from Berkeley. So what happened after? You build telescopes, right? I built little bits and bobs for telescopes. I didn't want to get a real job, so I started a motorcycle company that was a complete disaster.

Not a complete disaster, but it was pretty rough. I learned a lot about running a company there. Basically, I learned all the things you're not supposed to do. Anatoly :I mean, that's the first one, right? You're supposed to do that. I'm glad it didn't hurt me too badly.

And then I ended up being a consultant for a company in Silicon Valley. It was like a design engineering consultancy and they put me on to Solyndra, which was a solar panel company. And that was a very fun couple of years building some really interesting technology and honing the skills that I use today and some of the ethos that I still use today because one of the things we were trying to do was how do you make a solar panel easier to install, because right now it's quite a time consuming process.

So my goal was to design a solar array that could be installed with no tools and we were successful in that. That's awesome. I'm going to keep saying that the whole episode. Jason :Two years on of creating the name and it still doesn't get old. So eventually Solyndra went belly up unfortunately, that could be 10 podcasts probably as to what happened there.

But my boss at the time was like, "Cool, we need to go over to Apple right away. Anatoly :Cool. So there's like a period of how many years of what you can't talk about. Jason :A few years actually. And actually I know for a fact that the program is still ongoing and is still super secret. That's pretty cool. What did you work on at Apple that you can talk about? Jason :So when I started Apple, my first project was on Mac PD doing the last generation of the MacBook Air, which I mean, people still review that as one of the best laptops ever made.

And I'm still quite proud of that. It was a very difficult project with a very small team, but it was very successful. And it was myself and one other mechanical engineer working with the ID team, designing this, what was supposed to be a two or three-week project. And six months later, I had my own office where we were doing prototypes of little tiny bits and pieces because Jony wanted it perfect. And that really kind of made my career at Apple was working on that project with the studio directly.

Anatoly :Is that camera like something you can buy now? Jason :I mean, if you got a few million bucks. I think it's on display somewhere. It was super cool. It had so many bits and pieces that were just absolutely ridiculous. The whole thing was handmade. My favorite little anecdote about that is it needed to be The tolerances were so tight that it needed to be hand assembled in a very particular way. Anatoly :Eventually you're going to get like a call at AM. Jason :Oh, yeah.

I do know who has it. And we do travel in the same circle, so I'm sure there's a day where I'll be like, "Hey, I built your camera. And then from there I joined iPad which was a whole other journey and learning a little bit more about mobile having come from solar panels and motorcycles, and desktop products, and laptops into iPad was a lot of fun.

And my first real claim to fame in iPad was leading architecture on the original iPad Pro, which is the original Jason :It was a lot of fun because we got to try a lot of different things. A funny story there though, that totally you know and a lot of people who follow me know, I'm huge into racing in cars and I do a lot of silly things.

We actually built in carbon fiber speaker caps inside the iPad Pro. Apple marketing made this big spiel about, "Oh, it's different. It does this, it does that. It's because I like carbon fiber because I like race cars and that's why we used it. I'm sure there's some marketing guy going no, but that's the honest truth is to why there are carbon fiber speaker caps in the iPad pro. Anatoly :I thought those are so cool. I ride bikes. All the cool bikes are carbon fiber. Jason :Let's see.

I don't think I have one here. I had one somewhere. I had the caps and everything, but it was a lot of work and it was a lot of fun. It was really interesting, but I got really sick of the bureaucracy at Apple. It wasn't for me. One day somebody was interviewing for my team at Apple, and they told me about what was going on Playground, which was Andy Rubin's new incubator.

And I thought that was super, super interesting. I'm interested in getting out of the Apple ecosystem. Let's talk. We can't tell you anything about it, but can you wait, like two months and we're going to give you a job. I said, "Cool. We built some really weird stuff to capture images for Apple Maps. Anatoly :That's cool. I mean, there is a hardware component to Apple Maps that people don't don't realize. All that stuff has to be captured somewhere.

I mean, there's warehouses full of hard drives of people having to still go through that data and make sure it's okay to use. And warehouses and warehouses full of hard drives. Anatoly :Yeah, I can imagine. What were we called? We were called Ninja Army for the first five months. And then eventually became known as Essential. I was technically the first hire, but the second employee at Essential and was there from the very beginning to the very end.

It was a hell of a ride. We built the Essential PH1, which was a really, really, really exceptional piece of hardware with some pretty crap software on it, unfortunately. Jason :Particularly the camera side needed a lot of work and unfortunately was released too early. And we could argue for days about what the reason was, but ultimately that was the end result of that.

And we never managed to bring another product to market despite building some really cool hardware there. Anatoly :So yeah, man, launching hardware is hard. Why did you decide to do this again? Jason :The biggest product that we built Or the coolest product. No, that was actually the smallest. The coolest product we designed at Essential was Project Gem.

And we are working on that up until the very end. And that was so revolutionary in the terms of mobile experience in which taught all of us that there was really an opportunity here. There was still things to be done and new things to be invented and new ways of interacting to be made available.

Jason :So when Essential went out of business, when Andy told me that was that, it was obvious to me that I need to take this opportunity now. I'm going to do it. I have a team available that I know is now all unemployed and let's keep them together and build something really, really cool. Jason :So I grabbed the key team members and then kept a few on the back burner while we raised money, and we got to the point where we were ready to rock and start building a new phone.

So while the first phone is a little more traditional device, I think in the future, we're going to have some really crazy things to build with you guys. I have no doubts. The gem thing was a pretty weird piece of hardware. It kind of looked almost like totally made out of glass. So this is one of those things that I love showing off in person is that glass phone.

It was a glass uni body, which has never been done in a cell phone before. The overall shape was I mean, the best description is either a candy bar mixed with an Apple TV remote and That's a great description. Piece of glass, size of a candy bar that kind of looks like an Apple TV remote. Jason :Yeah, exactly. But it was all one piece of glass. Even the camera bump, the flash, everything was a continuous piece of glass.

And every hardware engineer I've shown that to goes, "How did you make this? And how did you manage to achieve the tolerances required to build that? But we were able to build them. And there's a couple of them in existence. I think they're all in Andy's garage still, except for the two that are in my possession still. And they work. Jason :Some of the issues we were encountering was that GMS wouldn't We wouldn't be approved for GMS with that device. So we were going to have to do some new and novel use cases there and come up with all new ways to interact with the device.

Anatoly :So awesome you guys started with a really strong focus on privacy. Was that your decision or something that was just you guys wanted to do at Essential anyways? Jason :No, that was definitely my decision and the decision of the team. We looked at what killed, Essential. A big part of that was a lack of focus other than building cool stuff. And that only gets you so far. There needs to be a reason why your customers want to join our adventure rather than go with a Samsung, or LG, or HTC, or Motorola or whatever was available at that time.

Jason :So we realized that a big problem facing everybody today is a lack of consumer privacy. And that's when we came to the conclusion that we could actually address that as an OEM. Anatoly :And that's a really tough challenge because you still probably want to keep Google services around.

Jason :Yeah, absolutely. So I mean-Anatoly :Do you think Yeah, go ahead. Jason :No, I was going to say it's a great segue into what things that people keep asking us since we announced our partnership is when we decided to say, "Okay, we're going to build a privacy centric phone, there have been privacy centric devices attempted in the past, but they were too extreme.

By cutting out GMS, by cutting out Android in some cases, you were left with a device that was so private, nobody would use it, which yeah, it works as a privacy device, but you don't sell any. Jason :I mean, I know for a fact that there are two different phone manufacturers who sold less than a thousand devices, despite putting tens of millions of dollars into it because we all use the same suppliers.

So the suppliers are excellent sources of information. And so I know for a fact that one of them was like, "Oh, we only shipped a thousand speakers to that company. Or they are consciously making that decision.

Go ahead. Jason :And that goes to what we've talked about is we're going to do the same with all the Solana mobile stack that we're integrating into the phone. We're not taking anything away. We're giving users an excellent device, a high-end flagship device that gives them more options and more choice in how they use it and what they use it for. If you've been a web 3. Anatoly :That's something that being building like in crypto for the last four years, I almost forgot how to build traditional applications.

And when I had to remember, I was like, "Oh man, yeah, there just doesn't seem a way to build privacy without really starting from the ground up and building a whole new set of applications that people actually use. And they deliver value to those users. People use them because they love them. But you need to start from the ground up. And that's really hard because getting product market fit, building applications and then competing with existing services is just like a uphill climb.

Building that community, which was what made our partnership so beautiful is you have that community and you have that development group that really wants to be actively involved and emotionally involved, and that's super exciting for us to be like, "Hey, let's give you a piece of hardware that you can call home too. I mean, this is the first time, honestly, I've seen anyone tweet that they will stop using an Apple product and switch to Android.

Jason :That is exciting. Anatoly :Yep. That would be awesome. Yeah, I remember when the iPhone launch and that was a real watershed moment. A lot of us, I was working on BREW and a lot of us were actually, like, felt really frustrated with the mobile industry because we had all these ideas. We wanted to build rich applications that are easy to code and totally different kind of UIs, dynamic UIs and stuff.

And these big telcos would give us like page spec of what a phone should look like because they their customers. And there was like this moment where Apple announced this thing and Steve Jobs showed, "Look, there's a browser. It's a real internet. It's not the mobile web that I don't know if people remember what that even looked on a LG flip phone. Jason :I do. Anatoly :That was a big deal. I don't know if we're there yet with crypto.

I don't know if there's a single application or anything like that when people open up and they're like, "Oh wow, this is it. It was big. Everybody was already using the internet and there was this obvious gap between desktop and mobile. But I think when people actually pay with tokens for their day to day stuff and all that whole loop works and it, and it's beautiful and it doesn't suck, I think that might like open up people to new ideas of what we can do with crypto on a mobile device that actually supports it natively.

The day that both of our parents can go and shop with tokens will be a watershed moment for crypto. I am really excited about that. When I think about the potential there, I mean you and I have talked about it a few times. It's immense and almost a little bit intimidating and staggering what the obvious potential is there. Anatoly :So what kind of hardware, what else do you want to build besides a phone? You don't have to announce anything, but you personally as somebody that's a super hardware nerd, if you had infinite budget, and could do whatever you want, what would you build?

I loved using that phone and I'm probably the only person on Earth that used that phone regularly for a while because I wanted to make sure it was great. And that thing worked so much better than anybody ever gave a potential credit for, as a small side device, as something you could toss in your pocket, in your bag and not think about. It was beautiful. I mean, for me, designing a piece of hardware has to also be very physically attractive and I think that was the most beautiful thing I've ever designed.

Jason :I do want to see the expansion of using your mobile devices, be it your watch or your phone interacting with the automotive sector. Obviously, we've chatted about it before. I have a problem when it comes to cars. Oh, wait. Nobody can see what I just pointed at. So I think the inner relationship between mobile, crypto, and automotive is even earlier than anything else in crypto, but there's a hell an opportunity there.

And thankfully, a lot of the automotive companies are starting to catch on and realize there's different potential there. Anatoly :What would be like a hardware integration between mobile and cars? Jason :I mean, we've already patented this idea.

So I will talk about it freely now, is the ability to track all your history of your vehicle. And when you sell your vehicle, you have everything written to the blockchain. The NFT itself will simply be a photo or a connection to the title, which is held somewhere else. But you can guarantee that if somebody sends you a NFT of a title, that it is tied to a physical object, which we've already patented that as well. Anatoly :So you want like the miles like the RPMs, like the actual raw data.

I don't know what else you got. I'm not a car person. Jason :Like the service history or the maintenance history, the sales history. Do you know if the mile You can guarantee that the miles weren't rolled back. You can know if it went through any What do they call Oh, when they call you to bring the car back in. Oh, recall notices. Anything with service was done. That's a real utility of that technology. And the kind of cars that people would really want this for like collectibles, like classic cars that you're getting what you're paying for.

Jason :Yeah, I think so. But also with your average Toyota or Civic, at least you know what the history was on that car. Was it repaired? Was it damaged at any given point? There is utility across the board. Jason :And then especially-Anatoly :Yeah, I can Jason :Last thing on that one, especially, if we go into the collectibles, like being able to take a cut down the road. I sell the car to you. You sell it to somebody else and I can take a fraction of a percent of that sale is pretty awesome.

Anatoly :If you're the person restoring the car. Anatoly :And you did this Yeah, that's actually like, I think been It's weird that model has never been replicated in the real world, but works so well with NFTs. Anatoly :That's a use case that I think is way under explored for stuff like that, for physical art.

It's one of the things that we patented early on was the connection between a physical and digital assets. Anatoly :Do you think Apple or Google care about what we're doing right now? Is this like reached anyone's decision-making yet or is this still-Jason :I know for a fact that our name has come up in both those companies, because I know a lot of people at the highest level.

One of my good friends is an SVP at Apple and he texted me. He's like, "They're talking about you in an executive meeting. I've made it in life. Are they talking about suing me though? I mean, obviously Google is still a partner because we are a GMS device and they are thrilled to have us. It's like being an advocate for the Android ecosystem. Anatoly :Oh yeah, absolutely. It's a lot of I'm not too worried.

They're so big that it doesn't seem like there's anything to worry about because they're just like, it's like worrying about, I don't know, nation state at this point. Anatoly :For a startup, it's such a big competitor that it's not even a competitor. And I think the companies that people often compare us to, or talk about us, nothing or What's it?

Oppo and OnePlus. One of the things that I've tried to do is make sure I have a good relationship with those companies as well, because it's kind of silly for a bunch of startups to be fighting over the scraps instead of taking swings at Apple, Google and Samsung in terms of device sales. Anatoly :Absolutely, yeah. I mean, OnePlus made some awesome devices too.

That was really cool to see them launch. When I was working at Android at Qualcomm, there was just always like this huge gap between quality and innovation in terms of like how the device looks and feels and they were able to really push the limits there.

Jason :Well, I think our next devices will be pushing some new limits, which will be a lot of fun. I guess, do you think like mobile Because it's so big, is there still room to innovate in terms of hardware? Jason :Yes. Anatoly :Besides like on the standard daily driver. I spend a lot of time actually. Now, that I'm the CEO and I have other teams of people now working for me pushing vision, I can spend a little more time thinking about how I want to change that interaction of device, what new technologies are out there, or even what new use cases of existing technologies there are.

Jason :So I have been working on something wholly new for how we interact with our devices in a way that I think people will naturally enjoy using it. It's a bit of technology that'll change how you actually touch and use your device, but it'll be done in a form factor in a manner that makes it approachable. And it's not foldable because I think that's kind of silly most of the time. Foldables, not also not sure about them.

I really like the steel on the Saga phone. Anatoly :Why did you guys pick steel? Jason :Two reasons. Number one, we didn't want to go titanium like we did on the Essential phone. It was a little too exactly the same, but we couldn't go to aluminum because it just doesn't have the same touch. It doesn't have the same feel. It doesn't have the same strength. It doesn't have the same feel, which I want to feel a premium device when I pick up a phone that I engineered.

An aluminum loses that a little bit. It's not stiff enough for my taste. Jason :So we landed on steel for the housing and then we landed on ceramic because we still did want a little tie back to Essential, but also because it does feel premium, it looks premium.

It's not paint, it's not glass. It's real ceramic. It's incredibly tough. It's very hard and it does well and drop while also allowing to be RF transparent and just, I mean, ultimately looking and feeling super premium to your fingers. Anatoly :When you make those decisions, how many logistics need to change? How many companies, suppliers, machines, how big of a process is that? Jason :Less now than it was five years ago, but it's because I have the team behind me that is incredibly capable of making it happen where we have a ridiculous Rolodex, a contact list for everybody under 25 of people to call for different materials and different processes.

The big one is, as you saw in the first EVT devices. First stainless devices, they were quite heavy. So one of the big changes we had to do was we had to optimize for aluminum on the very, very first prototypes. We switched to stainless, but we didn't change our cutter pass. We didn't change our processes. So into the current build, we've made a lot of changes to ensure that we bring the weight down just the right amount, but still have a super strong device. Anatoly :Are those separate companies like the company that makes the cutters and stamps the thing and puts on the ceramic.

If you went from ceramic to glass, how big of a logistical nightmare is that? Jason :If we switched over to glass, it's a different company that would manufacture and process the material. And then because it's glass, we'd have to also find a paint shop to paint the device. Whereas ceramic has that color baked in, literally. Anatoly :Got it. That makes sense. So you have to do like a bunch of work. It's not just one company that you go to and they're like, "Sure, we can do everything.

It's all over the place in Asia. Prior to the pandemic, I probably would've spent the last 10 months living in and out of China. Anatoly :And most of the stuff is in China or all over Asia at this point? Jason :A lot of the supply chain comes out of China, but that doesn't mean we're manufacturing there. We have plants or factories both in China and in Vietnam, but it's still all in Asia. Is there any chance for that stuff to ever happen in the US or is it just like the world is like manufacturing shifted irreparably?

Jason :I have had a few conversations with the Canadian government about this. I think the US will be still quite difficult, but in Canada might be possible. But the biggest issue is all the subcomponents are still made in Asia. So even if you were doing final assembly in North America, you'd still have to ship all the individual components from Asia. Your memory is going to come out of Korea.

The display will come out of either Indonesia or China and there's no manufacturing plants for all those components anywhere in the Western world. Anatoly :Actually manufacturing those components in the Western world is impossible. Why is it impossible? Jason :I mean, just the billions of dollars required would be cost prohibitive to build those plants.

Those fab houses are huge and would take years to build. Anatoly :And that's because things have gotten so specialized in displays and everything that it's just like, "Yeah. It's basically Intel like level kind of commitment. I mean, you're talking massive, massive.

And even the ones that are good at it already have issues now at the scales we're talking about. Like the four nanometer process, which is used to build the chip we're using in Saga is there are only two companies in the world that even understand how to make the fab devices to make those chips. This is the Tungsten droplet, right? Anatoly :You have like a droplet that refracts UV light. Jason :Honestly, I'm not that familiar with that process, but yeah, it is crazy, crazy.

It's tough to explain to people how tiny four nanometers is. And then how many traces they have to put down in a tiny little chip that we're going to put in your phone and makes everything work. Anatoly :How do you find these places?

How do you start? If you were like a year-old that's like, "Hey, I want to build cool shit, build cool electronics," how would you start? I want to go out there with a completely open mind and just be like everybody teach me. I said, "I don't know what I'm doing on some of this stuff. I will sit here and learn from the best and I will be super polite because I see That was one of the things that used to bug me a lot is I saw Western people acting like jackasses with their Eastern counterparts.

Jason :Now they get nowhere and I made it at a point to always, always, always be polite, always say, "Look, I'm here to learn. Let me help you. If I know something that I can share, I'm going to go out of my way to share it. Anatoly :It's basically like a relationship thing and you have to know what they can build and know what they do well and stuff.

And go in there with an open mind and sometimes an open wallet. That always opens some doors and expect to try to make it a back and forth. Because you get a lot further if you can say, "Hey, let me offer you some of my knowledge in exchange for some of your knowledge. Because my imagination is that like they only work with Google and they want to sell a hundred million units or whatever. That's the other hard part. And that comes later on once you have those relationships because it doesn't matter who you are.

If you don't have that existing relationship, they're going to laugh you out of the building, if they even let you in the door. Makes sense. That's pretty good advice. Jason :I think it's the only way to build those relationships, so you know who to call. And I think a big part of it is it's not always the CEO you need to talk to.

You need to talk to his right hand guy. You need to talk to the CTO. You need to know the right person to talk to at each company, and it changes a little bit. You'll you learn who the movers and shakers are, the people who can actually make things happen for you. And that's where it gets super interesting. And it takes boots on the ground to learn that.

Anatoly :So I imagine that's still true for big companies, as you get bigger, you still just need to keep those relationships going. Jason :If you want to innovate, you need to. If you just want to just keep grinding out the same BS you've been doing for 20 years, they'll usually just give you the C team and you can just grind and nobody moves anything.

The innovation part is hard. How long is the innovation cycle and hardware? Jason :Anywhere from days to years, right? I have been on the back side of things where it's like, "Oh, I have an idea. Actually, that was super easy to implement. It's done. But I've also Making the glass housing for GEM was an month project to get the tolerance that we need to hold.

For everybody who's listening, you need to hold microns is pretty standard, which a 10th of a millimeter. Very, very-Anatoly :How many human hairs is that? Jason :Less than one. So we need to hold those tolerances on piece of glass and how glass is manufactured is that you literally take a molded part and cook it down into a shape.

And you can imagine trying to hold Like if you're baking something in your oven and trying to get it to stay within a 10th of a millimeter, it's never going to happen. So we had to help both Corning and our third party invent new technologies to achieve that result. Anatoly :That's really cool.

Are people using these technologies anywhere else? Or is this something that is basically just only was built for GEM? Jason :I think they're still using There's not a lot of applications where you need a deep draw, weird aspect ratio glass part, but I know they're using it for two and a half D or even light 3D shapes, that at least allowed them to make 3D shapes that weren't as extreme as GEM in a more factory friendly manner.

Anatoly :Super goal. I could talk about random manufacturing for hours. Anatoly :You guys also have like a pretty awesome software team. Anatoly :And you guys did a lot of work in actually adding privacy features to the Android stack.

Anatoly :What are these privacy features? Jason :I'd love to have Gary answer that question if he were here. But mostly what we wanted to do is allow the user to just be more aware of where their data is going and how it's being treated by any webpage they go, any app they use and alert them if more data than they expect is going out and a place where they can work within their device, where they can guarantee that nothing is going out that they don't control, which we haven't named yet because somebody stole our name.

Jason :And then the other one that I love that I cannot wait to use more of is what we called lockdown, but then Google used that name for what they were doing. But the ability to just turn off any module on the phone when you want to. Anatoly :And what do you mean by module? Jason :So right now, I think in lockdown mode that Google offers you can turn off the camera and mic. But we can turn off the camera, the mic, the antennas, the USB port, whatever.

A module is any piece of hardware on the device we can individually completely disable that. Does the user have a physical notification that that thing is turned off? Are there like LEDs or something that light up? We're still working on that with your team as to what those notifications will look like, what that UI and UX looks like.

But yeah, there are both physical haptic feedback as well as visual feedback. Anatoly :Can you turn off GPS and things like that and other sensors. Or I guess the GPS radio. I don't know how baked in those are these days. Jason :It's actually super, super, super baked in.

One of our investors is an Apple employee. And I was explaining to him like, "Look, man, you can put your phone in an airplane mode. And he's like BS. And I'm like, "No, no, no. Watch, watch, watch. Put your phone in airplane mode. Anatoly :How has it been like getting folks like You guys work with mostly non-crypto people, up until you met me?

Jason :You. Yeah, basically. What has that conversation been like? What has been their reaction? Jason :It's been all over the map. It says there were some very vocal, negative people outside of the company, which I completely expected and doesn't really bug me at all. We had surprising support within the company, to be honest.

This is ridiculous. And then the counter to that, the amount of support where people were like, "No, this is exciting. This is the next generation of mobile will be built on web 3. And I think the definition of web 3. I think this is like a huge opportunity for us to set the standards and really push for privacy first and just build something that can be a really good base.

The bricks that web 3. Jason :Exactly. Anatoly :I guess, what was like the detractors? What was like the any points that they brought up that you think were interesting or worthwhile? Jason :I think that was the biggest thing is none of the negative comments I heard were worth that much because it was the standard anti-crypto comments, which is like, "Oh, I don't believe in it.

This is scam. I don't see it. That's fine. Frankly, I still think Facebook is a little stupid, but they sure are worth billions and billions and billions of dollars. So there is a market for it. It was really hard for me too, to accept, to believe in Facebook in those early days too. But in my mind that is like the quintessential internet company, more so than Google. Because it was really like All they're doing is connecting people.

And that's a very weird thing to think about that, that could be worth half a trillion dollars or whatever it is these days. Jason :Who knows? They're probably more than that. Anatoly :I have this analogy that Facebook has a social graph where you have to hop through people. You're connected through some intermediaries, but crypto, it's all public keys, super connected or like a single censorship resistant message bus. Hence regulations should be made to stop people from abusing the technology for the sake of themselves.

But he added that there was an opportunity for the U. In the face of such astounding innovation, crypto companies and regulators face a growing challenge: balancing security practices with new products and features. Popular cryptocurrency exchange Binance seemingly used this strategy up until this year when regulators started cracking down. The exchange listed margin trading pairs with major fiat currencies and allowed leverage up to x from its futures trading platform, but had to reduce available leverage and delist margin trading pairs when it reportedly started being investigated by the United States Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department.

While Binance was forced to remove some of its offerings and scale down leverage on its platform, other exchanges are still providing users with these same products. In a recent blog post, Nasdaq-listed crypto exchange Coinbase noted that its plans to launch a lending program were halted by the U.

A proposed alternative has involved leaving regulators out of the picture. The Commissioner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission CFTC Brian Quintenz has championed this alternative, at one point calling for cryptocurrency exchanges to regulate themselves, echoing the sentiment of many in the industry.

Is self-regulation a viable alternative? Do decentralized exchanges pose a threat? While the debate on self-regulation continues, another one has grown over decentralized trading platforms and their impact on the market. Non-custodial decentralized exchanges allow users to trade directly from their wallets, often without even registering with an email address.

Others suggest DEXs, even those run through decentralized autonomous organizations DAOs , can improve their transparency to help blockchain sleuths and law enforcement organizations find illicit transactions. To chief investment officer of digital asset investment firm Arca Jeff Dorman, decentralized applications DApps and other projects can contribute to the safety of the cryptocurrency space.

He noted that implementing KYC by itself may not be enough to deter illicit activities and protect users. This means that the account holder is identified and that all funds on the chain can be traced — ultimately creating an inhospitable environment for illicit activities and deters it right from the beginning. The phenomenal growth of cryptocurrencies means the sector already offers considerable choice. Funds are already offering investors exposure to sustainability-focused crypto miners and infrastructure.

Crypto miners create new crypto coins by solving complex mathematical equations. The first to solve the specific problem is paid a fraction of the transaction as a fee for their efforts and gets to keep those coins. It invests in crypto miners and semiconductor companies that already use clean energy sources or have pledged to transition in the near future. Khalif and his fellow co-founders — Ethan Vera and Wes Fulford — recognised that crypto mining companies implementing clean energy solutions and operations will be more attractive to responsible investors.

Khalif himself worked in investor relations at Microsoft. The agencies will focus on what activities banks can legally participate in, and outline rules to ensure safety, consumer protection and compliance with existing laws, said the joint statement from the Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The lack of regulatory clarity has posed a challenge for larger investors. As cryptocurrency has become increasingly more mainstream, federal agencies have been working to regulate the market.

A particular focus was around traditional banks that could start getting involved in crypto markets, and what might be involved in legally allowing that. The agencies worked on addressing issues within three broad areas: developing a standard vocabulary, identifying risks around safety and compliance and analyzing the application of existing laws.

Beginning next year, staff from the agencies will address the possibility of banks acting as custodians, facilitating consumer purchases and sales, making loans collateralized by cryptocurrencies and processing payments using cryptocurrencies such as stablecoins, according to the statement.

The agencies also reaffirmed previous guidance that said banks wanting to get involved in cryptocurrencies would have to notify their regulator of their intent and show they are doing it in a safe and sound manner. The agencies plan to continue developing new standards throughout , they said. That is the view of Hostplus chief investment officer Sam -Sicilia, who says it is no longer possible to dismiss the booming crypto market simply because of regulatory headwinds.

We need a governance structure, we need safekeeping of the assets and there are regulatory -requirements. Mr Sicilia's comments come after Bank of America last month put out a research paper on crypto with the same sentiment and as institutional investors around the globe mull crypto's investment prospects.

Cryptocurrencies had "no intrinsic value, typically do not have any issuer standing behind them, and rely on users' trust in the software protocol that controls the system", the RBA's head of payments policy, Tony Richards, said on Thursday. And that could be a long time from now," he said. That's the driving force powering markets. And there will be volatility, of course, but so be it. Where else are they going to put their money?

The investment represented a strategic opportunity for the fund to add to its private equity portfolio while supporting an emerging business, Mr Sicilia said. Similar to the development of the internet in the s, their accelerated development and adoption makes it difficult to automatically apply existing regulatory frameworks.

Currently, there is no uniform definition of cryptocurrencies. Some countries have identified them as a new asset class, but the vast majority have chosen not to define them yet through clear regulatory frameworks. According to legal scholar Joe Dewey, the latter approach seems to be the preferred option for regulators internationally to position themselves and apply appropriate regulations as the technology advances.

As far as Panama is concerned, we currently have two bills under discussion. However, we must keep an eye on developments at the international level and, in particular, the United States, because the way in which they are regulated and supervised in this country will probably determine how they will be regulated elsewhere.

In the United States, various authorities have warned about the risk of over-regulating the development of cryptocurrencies early on. This does not mean that they are not subject to any regulation. Starting with the SEC, the mechanism used to determine whether cryptocurrencies constitute a security is provided by the Howey test, named after the SEC v. Howey Co. Supreme Court in The test applies to any contract or transaction and asks four questions: 1. Is there an investment of money?

Is the investment made with the expectation of future profits? Is the investment of money in a common enterprise? Do the benefits come from the efforts of others? It is precisely this last question that poses the biggest problems for cryptocurrencies. It is appropriate to distinguish that cryptocurrencies can be decentralized when there is no control over the money supply or centralized when there is.

The case of bitcoin is among the most representative, because due to its decentralized nature, no public funds have ever been raised for its development and the network is maintained by a dispersed community of unaffiliated users. As a result, the SEC has clearly indicated that bitcoin is not a security. Conversely, centralized cryptocurrencies such as tokens issued to raise funds for a company or project are considered securities and are subject to SEC jurisdiction.

For its part, the CFTC has defined "commodities" as any service, right or interest for which a futures contract exists or could exist. In a proceeding against Coinflip , the CFTC first made the determination that decentralized cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are commodities. Additionally, according to the criteria set forth by the IRS, cryptocurrencies have been classified as property, giving U. As we have seen, cryptocurrencies do not fit integrally into any of the above categories.

And while they have to operate and comply with existing legal frameworks, their regulation remains weak compared to that imposed on the traditional financial system. This has served to generate the perception that cryptocurrencies are a vehicle for illicit activities. However, data published by the World Economic Forum seems to indicate otherwise. In this regard, industry experts have argued that the introduction of regulations would result in greater trust and security, leading to greater adoption.

The potential of cryptocurrencies to transform the functioning of traditional financial systems is clear. The position of some countries to ban them will not prevent their adoption, it will only limit the ability of regulators to guide activity and address potential risks. In Panama, we must be attentive to take advantage and timely adapt our legal framework in line with the standards achieved, to put us in a position to take advantage of the opportunities generated by this new technology.

The author is a lawyer and business consultant Cryptocurrency enables ransomware attacks and support organized crime STUFF. A parliamentary select committee is currently investigating cryptocurrencies, raising the prospect of some form of extra controls. Hamilton gave his evidence by video link from Waikato, whose district health board is still recovering from a crippling ransomware attack in May.

Access to cryptocurrency exchanges provided the infrastructure behind criminal ransomware activity, it said. Hamilton also told MPs the world would probably see more ransomware-type attacks. Such a move would bring a lot of blockchain developers to the country, he said. But BlockchainNZ, an association of organisations and individuals involved in the Blockchain technology that underpins cryptocurrencies, told the committee that they were a source of innovation.

Adam Dodds, who sits on the board of a number of cryptocurrency companies, said the horse had bolted on crypto and New Zealand risked being left behind. Benefits of crypto included the ability to pre-program rules into payments, so for example if someone died, their wealth could be automatically distributed according to their wishes, he said. It's all going to be digitised value and you're not going to pull out your Visa card in the middle of a metaverse and swipe it.

It's so hot right now that there are reports of year-olds buying it and advising their parents to get in on the craze. Despite the emergence of cryptocurrency only in the past decade, many investors are wondering if the exploding prices in crypto should change how they invest their money. What is cryptocurrency?

Unlike traditional currency, there is no central bank issuing cryptocurrency, and there is virtually no regulation. Cryptocurrencies are unique in that they are made by computers and then stored in a digital wallet. All transactions are made online and recorded on a blockchain, a public ledger that requires no intermediary such as a bank. Bitcoin was the first and most widely recognized cryptocurrency.

As opposed to currencies such as the U. Is it smart to invest in cryptocurrency? There is not enough data or history to determine whether Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are viable to hold as a long-term asset. And, unlike stocks, owning cryptocurrency doesn't give you a right to share in the income of an underlying business. However, investors who enjoy the thrill of speculation may find these investments hold some appeal. The mania is reminiscent of the dot.

Before diving into investing in crypto, you should understand the risks and costs. First, you should prepare for much wider fluctuations in priced than stocks or most other investments. Clinton is not the only one seeing that the rise in popularity of cryptocurrency could hurt the U. Former President Donald Trump has said on several occasions that he does not like cryptocurrency because it competes against the U.

City A. Binance's chief executive Changpeng Zhao, who goes by the moniker 'CZ', is signalling his support for greater crypto regulation with the publication of a list of guidelines which he hopes will underpin a global regulatory framework He explained that, while the crypto industry had hitherto thrived in a lax regulatory environment, the need for clarity and security was becoming ever more necessary as investors pour in.

Unlike more traditional asset classes, cryptocurrencies are not governed by a single agency, nor are they overseen by a centralized, regulated exchange, with different regulators treating cryptocurrency in different ways. For example, the SEC applies the Howey principle to determine whether cryptocurrencies qualify as a regulated security; the Commodity Futures Trading Commission argues that cryptocurrency should be regulated like a commodity; the Internal Revenue Service taxes cryptocurrency like property; many in FinTech argue it is simply a form of payment.

Accordingly, cryptocurrency regulation is an ever-evolving area, with multiple agencies trying to determine how to regulate this new asset class. The IIJA starts the process of addressing this confusion and regulatory competition. Under the IIJA, the IRS will grow its regulatory power over cryptocurrencies by increasing the reporting requirements surrounding digital assets. The bill will require 'brokers' to report transactions for cryptocurrencies and other digital assets to the IRS on a form.

The expansive definition of the term 'broker' may be controversial because a broker is any person who regularly provides a service that executes transfers of digital assets, like cryptocurrencies. Anyone acting as a broker will be required to report those transactions to the IRS in the same manner that securities brokers must do for stock and bond trades today.

Industry advocates warn that such a broad definition will potentially implicate cryptocurrency miners, validators, and developers as brokers who must now report information to the IRS that they may not have access to. Opponents of these new regulations argue they could threaten the growing cryptocurrency market by enforcing reporting requirements and additional burdens on an unsuspecting and perhaps unintended group of individuals and entities that may not have familiarity with or the sophistication of entities traditionally required to report, such as SEC-regulated brokers.

Indeed, these new reporting requirements potentially fall on participants in the market, and not just those performing traditional brokerage services. India has created a "robust framework of data protection, privacy and security", and is using data to empower people within a democratic framework with strong guarantees of individual rights, he said in a virtual keynote address at the Sydney Dialogue organised by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Describing technology and data as "new weapons", Modi said: "Technology has already become a major instrument of global competition and key to shaping the future international order The biggest strength of democracy is openness.

At the same time, we should not allow a few vested interests to misuse this openness. It is important that all democratic nations work together on this and ensure it does not end up in wrong hands, which can spoil our youth," he said. Modi added, "We are at a historic moment of choice - whether all the wonderful powers of technology of our age will be instruments of cooperation or conflict, coercion or choice, domination or development, oppression or opportunity.

India, Australia and our partners in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond hear the call of our times. Officials had also warned such unregulated markets cannot be allowed to become avenues for money laundering and terror financing. The government is considering strong regulatory steps on cryptocurrency and planning to forge global partnerships and collective strategies since the issue cuts across geographical borders.

Describing data as the "greatest product of technology", Modi said India has "created a robust framework of data protection, privacy and security", and also has unmatched experience in using data to empower people within a democratic framework with strong guarantees of individual rights. He suggested democracies should come together to build a future that reflects democratic values by investing in research and development of future technology, developing a trusted manufacturing base and trusted supply chains, and deepening intelligence and operational cooperation on cyber-security and protection of critical information infrastructure.

Democracies should also work jointly to prevent manipulation of public opinions, develop technical and governance standards and norms consistent with democratic values, and create standards and norms for data governance and for cross-border flow that protect and secure data, he said. Modi also listed five important transitions taking place in India in areas related to technology. The country, he said, is building the world's most extensive public information infrastructure, and more than 1.

We have built the world's most efficient payment infrastructure, the UPI. Over million Indians use internet, million are on smartphones," he added. Secondly, India is transforming the lives of people by using digital technology for governance, inclusion, empowerment, connectivity, delivery of benefits and welfare. Third, India has the world's third largest and fastest growing startup eco-system that is providing solutions to everything from health to national security, and fourth, industry, services and agriculture are undergoing a "massive digital transformation".

The fifth key area listed by Modi was preparing India for the future by investing in indigenous capabilities in telecom technology such as 5G and 6G. We are developing strong capabilities in cloud platforms and cloud computing," he said. All of this is key to resilience and digital sovereignty, and India's space programme is now open to innovation and investment from the private sector. We have set up a task force with our industry to make India a global hub for cyber security," he said.

A few days ago, the platform created by Changpeng Zhao, published the document that integrates the 10 fundamental rights of cryptocurrency users, in order to trace a regulatory path for the protection and security of individuals who move resources through these assets. Binance is present in countries around the world, giving it the global perspective on how these instruments are attempted to be regulated globally.

We want to do everything we can as an industry to work hand-in-hand with regulators and global leaders to identify regulatory policy that is effective and, more importantly, protects users and drives innovation. According to the platform, these should be the 10 rights of cryptocurrency users: Every human being should have access to financial tools, such as cryptocurrencies, that enable greater economic independence. Industry participants have a responsibility to work with regulators and lawmakers to shape new standards for crypto assets.

Smart regulation encourages innovation and helps keep users safe. Responsible crypto platforms have an obligation to protect users from bad actors and implement know-your-customer processes to prevent financial crime. Privacy is a human right, and personally identifiable information PII data should be subject to strict levels of protection. Cryptocurrency users have the right to access exchanges that keep their funds safe, in secure custody with comprehensive deposit insurance.

Healthy markets must maintain a robust level of liquidity to ensure a stable and frictionless trading environment. Regulation and innovation are not mutually exclusive. Cryptocurrency users deserve secure access to emerging technologies and practices, including NFTs, stable coins, staking, yield farming and more. Closing the knowledge gap is essential when it comes to crypto.

Users have the right to obtain accurate information about crypto assets, without fear of falling victim to unfair or misleading advertising. Markets offering derivative instruments must be subject to appropriate regulations. This ensures that all users meet eligibility requirements and that their transactions are settled fairly. Crypto regulation is inevitable. Users have the right to share their voice on how the industry should evolve with the blockchain platform of their choice.

He shed light on the following aspects regarding the crypto regulation: He warned that due to the cryptocurrency sector's rapid growth it has come closer to posing a threat to global financial stability.

Besides, the crypto industry is also being integrated into the traditional financial system at a rapid rate. He urged regulators and legislators to take prompt action and establish rules for crypto assets. He opined that the BOE is not lagging behind as much because new players and social media companies like Meta who plan to issue their own stablecoins and money haven't launched it yet.

The deputy governor for financial stability also said that the reason for exploring digital pound is because the way we live and the way we transact is changing Cunliffe emphasized clearly though that cryptocurrencies are not a threat yet, but their unprecedented growth and integration with the traditional financial system is worrisome. He said that the volatility of crypto assets could soon start showing up in traditional markets, Bitcoin.

He said that the taskforce between the Treasury and BOE will explore next year whether public, large businesses and households should really have the option of using and holding the safest form of money, which is the money backed by BOE in their everyday lives.

He had warned earlier in October as well that owing to its extreme volatility and lack of intrinsic value, crypto could collapse. In the same month, BOE had issued a report stating crypto assets pose limited direct risks to the financial stability of UK's financial system. For the latest crypto news and investment tips, follow our Cryptocurrency page and for live cryptocurrency price updates, click here.

For Reprint Rights: timescontent. November 19, , World: Bitcoin and other cryptos have slumped after record highs. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have fallen sharply after seeing record-highs just last week. The reasons why cryptos have been so volatile of late is unclear but there are a number of factors at play.

One reason may be due to market manipulation, argues David Gerard, the author of the book Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain. And it is all to do with Tether, a blockchain-based cryptocurrency whose tokens are backed by an equivalent amount of US dollars. Tether pumping up prices "Tethers are supposed to be all backed by dollars. There's a lot of reasons like settlements with the authorities that suggest this has not been the case in the past, and we shouldn't presume it's the case now," Gerard told Euronews Next.

That's basically the story of the shenanigans that went on in the last week or two". Gerard argues this kind of market manipulation and fake liquidity happens all the time. And you'd better be prepared to be eaten alive," Gerard warned. November 19, , U. The official remarked that the emerging marketpresents a wide range of "opportunities" for millions of investors, but warned that it also has "challenges". In that sense, he questioned the link of cryptocurrencies to illicit trade.

However, Adeyemo seems to ignore that fiat currencies are currently the most adopted method of payment on the black market. On the other hand, "Wally" stressed the importance of regulations in the market and publicly urged the U. Read more:? The Treasury undersecretary, however, is convinced that the hegemony of his currency is not under threat and even spoke of the latest federal stimulus will boost the domestic economy. DeFi, where users engage in financial transactions directly with one another using smart contracts, without the need for financial intermediaries like banks, has the potential to redefine existing financial systems by bringing about greater financial inclusion to the unbanked and lowering the cost of transactions.

But the nascent DeFi industry also has risks and is "a tempting honeypot for hackers and a deep pool of liquidity that can be taken advantage of by money launderers," according to blockchain data analytics firm Elliptic in a new report "DeFi: Regulation, Compliance and the Growth of DeCrime. See related article:Ethereum's Web 3. Criminal actors have seen the opportunity to exploit this.

The majority of DeFi losses were attributed to bug and code exploits, where hackers exploit errors in the smart contract code, and economic exploits, where the attacker exploits loopholes in how the DeFi service operates. An example of an economic exploit is where an attacker manipulates asset prices in order to take advantage of arbitrage opportunities on DeFi services that would otherwise not exist such as through a flash loan.

DApps like decentralized exchanges DEXs , decentralized mixers and cross-chain bridges can also be used by criminals to hide their blockchain money trail and launder ill-gotten gains, without using centralized services that could alert law enforcement. News in a follow-up email. With the rise of cryptocurrencies including stablecoins and DeFi, regulators around the world are grappling with how they support the innovation to flourish, while managing the associated risks.

Consumer protection is also foremost in the minds of many regulators. News in an email. Traditionally, the HKMA has long-standing principles of financial crime mitigation which will likely be reflected in any crypto regulation it has planned," DePow added. Such currencies require miners to compete to validate transactions on their blockchains, and that takes enormous, power-hungry servers. Bitcoin mining uses energy predominantly generated from fossil fuels, which creates air pollution and carbon emissions, said Jones.

The damages Jones and his colleagues pinpointed arise from increased pollutants generated from the burning of fossil fuels used to produce energy. Exposure to pollutants such as fine particulate matter has been linked to increased risk of premature death.

In doing so, cryptocurrency is exacerbating decades of environmental racism and fueling climate chaos. November 17, All I'm going to tell you is that we've finally built a tool that can make money work without banks, n8 make organizations work without corporations and courts, n9 make sharing and transacting online work without Big Tech, n10 and that because of that change there's a better chance that tomorrow's misfits will be able to speak, share, and innovate.

This truly American ideal, however, isn't about anarchy. It's about opportunity and equality under the law. Bitcoin and follow-on cryptocurrencies are not unregulated. Anyone can freely write and share the open source software that makes these technologies work, and any prior restraint on sharing that expressive content violates our First Amendment rights. The gaps are not, contrary to popular belief, a central bank digital currency gap with China.

The CCP is more interested in banning permissionless tools like Bitcoin n19 and substituting a surveillance tool n20 that will give them even more control over the misfits within their borders. We should not emulate that policy. The gaps are much more mundane; they deal with securities and commodities futures policies and tax issues.

Below we will discuss them in turn by category. Securities and commodities futures policy On the margin, securities and commodities futures laws can be improved and there are well-drafted bills in the House that address those issues. They fall into two major baskets: clarity for the developers of new cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency secondary market oversight.

Clarity for developers of new cryptocurrencies. First, pre-sales of future cryptocurrencies, often called "initial coin offerings" or "ICOs", already meet the definition of securities and, indeed, investors protections and disclosures afforded by the securities laws are sensible and should be fairly applied in the context of promises of future cryptocurrencies.

However, once a cryptocurrency has launched, the application of securities laws is no longer appropriate. While other investor protection measures may continue to apply and remain relevant and appropriate, the disclosure regime inherent in securities issuance regulation is a poor fit. We believe that the SEC has avoided overbroad interpretation of this ambiguity thus far but prefer a legislative solution for the long term. Chairman McHenry has introduced a safe harbor for developers of new cryptocurrencies n24 based on an earlier proposal from SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce.

This approach has the advantage of not altering the necessarily flexible n28 definition of a security in the law while also providing some assurance that innovators acting in good faith will not be the target of a surprise enforcement action. Congressman Emmer has introduced a bill that would subtly alter the definition of securities to limit its applicability such that it could not include truly open source, open network cryptocurrencies.

While cryptocurrency exchanges here in the U. The SEC and CFTC both have competency supervising trading venues for market integrity but neither has jurisdiction over trading venues dealing exclusively in cryptocurrencies the CFTC supervises commodities derivatives markets while the SEC supervises securities markets; cryptocurrency exchanges are typically commodities spot markets only n Last session, Chairman Conoway introduced legislation that would grant the CFTC authority to supervise cryptocurrency spot markets.

In the Senate there was a bipartisan solution with widespread support but procedurally it was impossible to implement before the bill's passage. The infrastructure package amended the definition of "broker" in the tax code. It is entirely reasonable to expect custodial cryptocurrency exchanges to do third party tax reporting.

However, it is inappropriate to ask non-custodial persons such as cryptocurrency miners and software developers to surveil persons who are not their customers. The I provision of the U. Warrantless private data collection is tolerated under the fourth amendment when it is performed by third parties e. Under I, one person to a two person transaction is obligated to collect sensitive information from her counterparty and hand that to government officials without any warrant or reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing.

In the case of two persons exchanging two different cryptocurrencies, they each would have to report on the other. The law literally asks one American citizen to inform on another if the transactions in which the two are engaged are "business" and if they take place using cash or cryptocurrencies. We believe that a constitutional challenge to I will eventually succeed in overturning the requirement, however we prefer a legislative fix. Other issues Existing IRS policy leaves taxpayers uncertain of their obligations with regard to cryptocurrency transactions.

Three common sense measures can be taken by congress to address this issue. De minimis tax exemption from capital gains treatment. Every time a cryptocurrency user purchases a good or a service using cryptocurrency she will have a taxable event.

She must account for any capital gains or losses in cryptocurrency from the time she first purchased the cryptocurrency to the time she used it to purchase a good or service. While this is reasonable for large purchases with substantial gains, it imposes unreasonably high transaction and accounting costs for small transactions.

In the House, Representatives DelBene and Schweikert have introduced legislation that would create that exemption. If they had previously held their cryptocurrency directly by personally controlling the private keys that correspond to addresses on the cryptocurrency network they would be able to use these keys to spend cryptocurrency on both sides of the fork.

If, on the other hand, a user has entrusted a company to secure their cryptocurrency, then they will have access to cryptocurrency on both sides of the fork if, and only if, their service-provider chooses to support both forks. In either case, spending cryptocurrency on one side of the fork does not spend cryptocurrency on the other side.

Therefore, the taxpayer will have obtained access to new assets more akin to a stock split than a trade. However, the open nature of cryptocurrency networks and network software means that this split could occur by virtue of the actions of anyone on the network with sufficient followers to go their own way. Moreover, the user may be unaware of the split and may have no knowledge that their private keys can access a new forked asset.

If a cryptocurrency user sells some of their forked assets they likely owe capital gains, that much is clear and uncontroversial. However, there are several additional questions: did the fork itself create an income event for cryptocurrency users or is it more like a stock split which is not treated as income? What is the basis for the forked asset; is it a zero-basis windfall or a division of the asset's previous value like a stock split?

Representative Emmer has introduced legislation that would create a safe harbor from penalties for taxpayers who made a good faith effort to pay taxes related to forked assets in the past, despite the lack of clarity. No tax should be owed under those circumstances and liabilities should apply later, when the taxpayer exercises dominion and control over the assets by selling them. Taxation of mining and staking rewards The IRS has determined that cryptocurrency mining and staking rewards should be taxed as income when they are generated.

Cryptocurrency stakers and miners dedicate costly computing resources to securing and sharing the public data that makes these technologies work, the public blockchains of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other permissionless networks. In return, the protocols are designed to allow these participants to create new units of cryptocurrency according to set release schedules. This is the incentive that makes an open network viable; if there was no reward to honest participation, then some other mechanism, like permissioning which computers can and cannot have access, would be required to secure the data.

These rewards are not, however, equivalent to being paid wages for labor. There's no person or company that is making a payment, the "payment" is the creation of new property by mixing one's own labor with one's own property. The better metaphor for these rewards would be to liken them to crops growing on one's property. Every additional ear of corn in one's field is a windfall to be certain, but taxing them at the moment of their creation would be an absurdity and an accounting nightmare.

In that context we tax the farmer when she sells her corn at market for a profit. Cryptocurrency rewards from staking and mining should be treated the same. Treating them like income creates perverse incentives to sell the new cryptocurrency immediately as it is produced in order to cover tax liabilities.

Any delay could risk a decline in the market price and an inability to cover past nominal income tax obligations. Moreover, some cryptocurrency networks afford several thousand small rewards every day; taxing each at its moment of creation with its own unique accounting basis is a recipe for complexity and poor compliance.

The simple solution is simply to tax the sale of mining and staking rewards rather than taxing their creation as income. If the early Internet is any indication, simplified tax regimes do not mean less revenue for governments. Quite the opposite, as clear rules lead to better compliance and the growth of profitable industry here in America rather than abroad.

Safe harbor for non-custodial uses State money transmission licensing laws are broadly drafted and carry harsh penalties for failure to comply.

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We agree that shortening the trade settlement cycle should be a high priority for the SEC, and we are working aggressively to make that possible.

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