I think it goes back to a couple of core principles that Treasury has reflected for a long time in its rulemaking. One is, you know, focus on the activity, not necessarily the product, and then based on the activity, making sure that we are building regulatory obligations to meet the risk associated with that type of activity. And certainly, that reflects the really the core of what we do and how we think about our regulations, which is that they need to be risk based and drive risk based behavior. So when you think about, again, these 80s and mixers and you reflect on the fact that they are really both I’m very attracted to elicit actors. But to this is, I think the important point and in terms of like, how do we manage privacy versus anonymity, you have these mixing entities that are not doing meaningful KYC, there’s no AML/CFT, there are none of the things that are in place to manage exactly this tension. So it’s not that everybody needs to know who you are transacting with. But there has to be a capacity, we think, for a U.S.person to be in a position to FOLLOW U.S.law, and not engage with a sanctioned individual, or a U.S.financial institution to not unwittingly engage in activity that is supporting the building of weapons in North Korea, and the like. So, ultimately, that’s the good news is we balanced it, and I think we have sort of the policy framework to balance it. But we recognize that the technology is developing quickly, we recognize that we need to engage closely with industry so that we understand the technology and as we think through potential new regulatory authorities, and, you know, a new definition of financial institution that clearly covers virtual assets, and virtual assets are riders and, and the like that, that we are doing in a way that is informed by what we are learning from, from, frankly, from smart people in this room.
In Conversation With Brian Nelson
