Concluding Consensus 2023

CoinDesk concluded Consensus 2023 on Friday, after three days packed with conversations on policy, technology, and scams. Get up to speed on some of the top stories below

Policy Summit

The narrative

This year's Consensus conference featured a significant number of policy sessions, including the inaugural Policy Summit - a full day of discussions focused on regulatory challenges across the globe.

Why it matters

Last week, thousands of individuals flocked to Austin, Texas to discuss all things crypto. The event was filled with highlights, including captivating keynote speeches and insightful panel discussions. In addition to the conference, the same week saw several Congressional hearings, follow-up work from the European Union, and additional efforts from regulators attempting to tackle the complexities of the crypto sector.

Breaking it down

At Consensus, policy issues took center stage and were integrated throughout the week in various discussions. Sessions specifically focused on policy matters, such as regulatory compliance and government adoption, were particularly prominent and attracted significant attention from attendees.

“What's really fascinating to me about the regulatory conversation is we're seeing these discussions happen in parallel with ongoing work in Congress and other jurisdictions, lending a bit more urgency to this week's talks. It has been a very busy week,” I said last week as part of a compilation of views for CoinDesk Chief Content Officer Michael Casey’s Money Reimagined column.

Full disclosure: I have a personal bias. As part of my daily job, I cover policy and regulatory matters on a global scale, including those specific to the United States.

I found it particularly intriguing that even my colleagues who don't typically cover regulatory matters also highlighted the importance of regulation as a key topic. In the same column, both Nick Baker, CoinDesk's Deputy Editor-in-Chief, and Ben Schiller, CoinDesk's Managing Editor for Consensus Magazine, mentioned regulatory issues. Other contributors to the column included CoinDesk's regulatory team reporters, Cheyenne Ligon and Amitoj Singh.

The fact is that regulatory issues remained a major topic of discussion in numerous panels at the conference, even those ostensibly focused on other themes. Throughout the three-day event, we heard questions regarding how crypto companies will navigate the diverse jurisdictions in which they operate and how they will respond to regulatory concerns in the aftermath of various collapses last year. These issues clearly continue to be at the forefront of many minds in the crypto industry.

There's also what I’ve taken to calling “fundamental questions.” During a Twitter space discussing Consensus last week, as well as during my opening to the Policy Summit, I mentioned that one of these fundamental questions is “will we ever get a clear delineation between what is a security and what is a commodity.”

As a moderator for several sessions, I posed this question to various speakers. While regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission may have an answer, it seems that for the most part, the determination of whether a particular asset is a security involves a complex analysis of facts and circumstances, rather than a straightforward answer. The question remains whether we can expect a more clear-cut definition in the future.

Another key question is whether we can expect any significant legislative action on crypto in the near future. During an interview, I asked Congressman Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), who chairs the influential House Financial Services Committee, whether we might see a bill passed into law within the next year. He responded with a resounding "yes". This indicates that there may be strong momentum for legislation on this front.

Another notable topic that emerged was the upcoming election, including the 2024 presidential race. While this is sure to be of interest, what caught my attention was the suggestion that this could be the first presidential election to feature a genuine crypto component. (The Twitter hack of 2020 hardly counts.) It seems that cryptocurrency has become increasingly prominent in the public discourse, and it will be intriguing to see how it plays out on the political stage.

Stories you may have missed

CoinDesk's Ethereum validator, "Zelda," has come to a close, and the team is now waiting to receive their funds back. Led by former CoinDesk employees Christine Kim and William Foxley, as well as current employee Spencer Beggs, the project was an exciting experiment. "Hats off to the entire CoinDesk team for a successful two years of validating. Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake is finally complete and Zelda’s purpose to enhance the editorial coverage of that transition has been fulfilled. So proud of this project and the people who carried this project on after I left CoinDesk like Spencer Beggs, Sam Kessler, and Margaux Nijkerk," said Christine in response to the shutdown.
Digital Currency Group's Chief Financial Officer, Michael Kraines, has resigned from his position after serving for two years. Meanwhile, the company, which is the parent company of CoinDesk, has announced that it has fully repaid a senior secured term loan of $350 million and generated $180 million in revenue during the first quarter of this year.

This week

Tuesday

15:30 UTC (4:30 p.m. BST) The United Kingdom is currently contemplating a bill that would ease regulations on advertising providers in the cryptocurrency industry. However, the scheduled vote on this bill has been postponed until Wednesday.

Wednesday

14:00 UTC (10:00 a.m. ET) The bidding process for Celsius' assets has restarted.
18:00 UTC (2:00 p.m. ET) The Federal Reserve will make an announcement regarding whether it will continue to increase interest rates.

Elsewhere:

(Princeton University) Wow, shocking: “From our qualitative analysis of verified user accounts, we find that cryptocurrency promotion accounts constitute significantly more Blue subscribers than our randomly sampled control dataset, indicating that a significant number of Blue users may be leveraging the confusion between legacy and Blue verification to promote their own commodities.”
(Various researchers) Researchers from a number of universities confirm what we all suspected about this year’s bank runs: “social media amplifies these bank run risk factors.”
(The New York Times) The FBI searched former FTX Digital Markets CEO Ryan Salame’s house last week.

If you have any ideas or questions about what I should cover in next week's article, or any other feedback you would like to provide, please feel free to reach out to me via email at [email protected] or find me on Twitter @nikhileshde.

You can also join the group conversation on Telegram

See ya’ll next week!

Source Coindesk