Is bitcoin a currency or commodity? That is one of the questions Marshall Hayner, CEO of Metal Pay, reflected on during an interview with Leigh Cuen of CoinDesk. According to Hayner, whatever the use case, it’s likely the industry will see more regulation going forward.
In fact, it’s this increased oversight that may finally answer the ineffable question of what are cryptocurrencies.
“I think… we’re going to see a clear definition of what securities are on a Blockchains by the SEC,” he said. He also thinks there will be “more rules around ICOs.”
While Hayner is both prepared for and welcomes regulation, he believes the new FATF travel rule and money transmitting restrictions may make it more difficult to operate wallet services and exchanges.
“If you’re a 14-year-old developer in your bedroom making a dogecoin wallet you should not have to be a registered money service business, you should not have to be a registered money transmitter,” Hayner said. “Now I don’t necessarily think that’s going to happen, but it could go down that road if we don’t inform regulators how we can start to make more compliant tools around the blockchain, instead of just taking best guesses at blockchain transaction monitoring and blustering of addresses.”
“We have to inform and innovate as a community on this, because it is going to become increasingly prohibitive,” Hayner said.
To this end, Hayner said he is building educational services on his platform.
“We have this concept of ‘discover’ [on Metal Pay] which is to show people information about cryptos,” he said, using a “little source where we’re putting curated content.” Adding, “We’re going to start to allow the coins and the companies in this space to also get their information out there as well as news outlets.”
This spirit of discovery and education that keeps Hayner’s mind open to the possibilities of cryptocurrencies.
“Just learn. Don’t get stuck to any one thing, don’t think I’m a maximalist of Bitcoin, don’t go look I’m a maximalist of ethereum or any coin. Keep your mind open and you will succeed.”
CoinDesk LIVE is an interview series featuring important voices in crypto. Watch all of our CoinDesk LIVE interviews here.
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