Fair crypto laws ‘possible’ in US but need ‘a lot of work’ – Crypto Council advisor

There are still industry leaders who remain hopeful that the United States will develop laws to treat crypto fairly, but an advisory to the Crypto Council for Innovation warns that it will require “a lot of work.”

Speaking to Cointelegraph on March 29 at the World of Web3 (WOW) Summit in Hong Kong, Crypto Council for Innovation advisor and Odsy Network co-founder Sean Lee said fair treatment of the crypto industry is possible in the United States.

He commented that financial reform was taken up after the 2008 financial crisis, so there is no reason why the same cannot be applied to crypto.

“It is possible, it will require a lot of work […] and usually the implementation comes after a massive crisis, like we have right now.”

The comments come in the wake of a massive crypto crackdown by US financial regulators in what some industry commentators have called a “war on crypto.”

The November FTX meltdown appears to have given regulators and anti-crypto lawmakers plenty of ammunition to bring the hammer down on the nascent crypto industry. However, Lee pointed out that FTX is not crypto, it is just a centralized trading venue, adding:

“If you don’t regulate centralized entities properly, well, we’ve seen back in history many times what can go wrong.”

He said there was a lot of education that needed to be done, and this is what organizations like the Crypto Council for Innovation are trying to achieve.

The council strives for dialogue with policymakers to help them understand where things are and “also help them understand what other jurisdictions are thinking,” he added.

The aid can be given to “help create more progressive guidelines” that enable both local communities and businesses to understand the landscape much better.

Related: 7 Details in the CFTC Lawsuit Against Binance You May Have Missed

Sheila Warren, CEO of the Crypto Council for Innovation, made similar arguments in a statement about the recent CFTC Binance lawsuit, stating that it “will hopefully mean the end of people coming into the crypto space and trying to take advantage of the lack of regulatory clarity in the United States.”

She also said the CFTC’s classification of certain cryptocurrencies as commodities was “a powerful shot across the bow to the SEC.”

In a related development, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has called for a bigger budget to tackle what he called the “Wild West” of crypto markets this week. Therefore, it remains unlikely that Uncle Sam’s war on crypto will be over anytime soon.