If digital currency is ever going to go mainstream, regulators will need to remove the doubt that surrounds it. But before that happens they need to understand the technology.
At a series of panels during the second day of the Consensus 2016 conference in New York City, a representative of the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, a former member of the White House communications team and multiple startup founders took turns predicting the future regulatory climate for digital currencies like bitcoin.
What connected each of the panels, which spanned a wide range of topics, was a distinct sense that the chasm between regulators and digital currency was only as big as the industry’s willingness to teach them.
Educating the regulators
Former spokesperson for President Obama, Jamie Smith, argued on her panel that the first step to getting a more widespread regulatory blessing on digital currency is to teach international regulators about the technology.
Now global chief communications officer at mining company BitFury, Smith is working to expand the firm's services to include a wide range of blockchain efforts. And, true to her word, she’s engaging with industry leaders and bureaucrats to standardize the way we talk about cryptocurrency.
Smith said:
"Everybody wants to be part of something special and they want to talk about it. I think we shouldn’t underestimate that a lot of regulators are really young and fresh on the scene and others have been around for while, and they’d both like to have something interesting to engage with."
By standardizing the way we talk about this new technology, she believes regulators will accelerate the rate they learn and, as a result, be less likely to react negatively to topics they don’t immediately understand.
While Smith mentioned the Blockchain Alliance as a specific example of a group able to get influential people in one room to educate them, panelist John Edge noted another option.
Edge is the founder of the non-profit digital ID startup Identity2020 and the White Chapel Think Tank, which aims to help increase trust in distributed ledger technology by regulators and policy influencers.
Edge told the audience of how White Chapel had once managed to gather about 16 representatives from the "Central Bank", the Executive Branch of the US Government and other regulators for a conversation with Adam Back, the creator of Hash Cash and co-founder of Blockstream.
To help them better understand blockchain, Edge said, governmental organizations and companies should create sandbox environments in which they can safely experiment, then invite younger members to take leadership positions exploring the technology.
"You’ll end up with an army of young people," he said, adding: "Before we can do those conversations, we have to do what Jamie’s talking about."
Jonathan Levin, founder and CEO of Chainalysis, had his own strategy for doing exactly that – teaching policymakers at any organization, including large corporations about blockchain.
Instead of pursuing an “army of young people,” Levin advocated that the organization should identify a single person with at least some bitcoin or blockchain knowledge, and offer them a position as a specialist.
"What works really well for any business who’s not in this [is] to find a point person," said Levin, who is also the co-author of a paper written to teach the British government about blockchain.
While it’s unlikely you'll get 25 or 30 people to understand and take action to implement a blockchain strategy, one person can become a valuable leader and an advocate, he explained.
"That person usually works three times as hard when they’re given that responsibility," Levin said.
More: http://www.coindesk.com/how-to-get-the-upper-hand-on-regulatory-policy/