It is often said that codes are some technology and some religions. It is therefore little surprising, therefore, that the unfolding regulatory overhaul involves both a search for active souls related to the state of cryptographic (often anti-establishment) core values, and palpable excitement for potential new use cases.
Following Coindesk’s blessing, I asked panelists for the Regulatory Roundtable for Future People at Consensus 2025.
Kayvan Sadeghi, Connor Spelliscy, Lewis Cohen, Michelle Ann Gitlitz and David Adlerstein can speak on the Spotlight Stage at 10am on May 14th at People’s Regulatory Roundtable. The round table is moderated by IVO Entchev. If you would like to submit your questions in advance, please email [email protected].
This is what they had to say.
Which core crypto values are most important to you, and why? How can they ensure that they are respected by regulatory reform?
Kayvan: Personal freedom and sovereignty are core values. Privacy and decentralization are primarily important as a means of achieving its sovereignty, otherwise it could be undermined through surveillance and centralized control points.
To ensure that these values are respected, it is helpful to restructure the conversation to focus on how new technologies can better achieve the objectives of existing law, rather than different ways. For example, many financial regulations are designed to prevent abuse by people who manage other people’s assets. However, as long as humans hold their power, the risk of corruption and greed persists, and the same problem recurs.
Threately regulated intermediaries are one path, but removing human intermediaries completely eliminates the underlying cause. The analogy allows for stricter alcohol laws and more frequent roadside checkpoints to reduce drunk driving, but those are band-aids on issues that can be eliminated in self-driving cars.
New technologies are being combat-tested and risks appear to be different to those of human intermediaries, but value can be preserved by focusing on the use of technology to provide a better solution to the problems that the law is already trying to solve.
Connor: Blockchain technology can provide users with an unprecedented level of transparency, reliability and security, as long as it allows policy frameworks to thrive by encouraging decentralization.
If properly regulated, blockchain projects continue to decentralize, giving users greater control over their finances and digital assets, and reducing their reliance on overreach institutions. Beyond financial use cases, decentralized blockchain networks act as infrastructure for social media platforms that allow users to own and control their data, community-owned platforms that leverage decentralized governance to compete with big technology, and various applications that allow users to protect the users they need to protect sophisticated AI.
We consider focusing on control to be the most effective framing option for defining decentralization under the law. Filing the test of control significantly reduces the information asymmetry caused by blockchain token control, justifying a lower burden or exemption of regulations under the securities law. For the thriving industry paper published this week, we recommended specific management principles for implementing blockchain design.
Lewis: When we talk about core values, we think about the value of users and builders who are attracted to the crypto space, not the value of technology. In my experience, these individuals are drawn to many things that certainly include personal sovereignty and decentralization, but are by no means limited to these functions.
What makes the most sense to me and has been pushing me forward for the past decade is working with an incredibly diverse community of users and builders to meet their needs – a fierce focus on innovation and the development of a new “internet of values”. We can never forget that “Crypto” is not a large company, but a system of tools built from the ground up by individuals who contribute to the time, energy and creativity that helps make the world a more connected and inclusive place.
MICHELLE: Decentralization is my most important value, as the distribution of power, control and decision-making across the network rather than the hands of central authorities allows true digital ownership and freedom to trade. When there is centralization and control, legal and regulatory safeguards are required that are reasonably tailored to the specific complexity of blockchain-based systems. To ensure decentralization is respected, legislators and regulators need to truly understand the underlying infrastructure and allow regulations to be created to protect consumers from loss of funds or value and protect against financial crime.
David: I have been a corporate lawyer for over 20 years and am an enthusiastic believer in the free market. The concept of perceived rights in alienable property, the concept that entrepreneurs should freely test ideas in the market, and the concept of “freedom of contract” – that agreeing adults should be free to enter into the exchange of goods and services as they wish, should be at the heart of US corporate law (and other liberal democrats). These concepts are typical cryptographic values.
As for all cryptography novelty, the paradigm requiring reasonable regulatory safeguards around new technologies is old. Commercial planes were once a new technology, and there are regulations to ensure pilot training and safety standards for good reason, but these days you can fly anytime, anywhere.
The same paradigm should apply here. I think it will be possible for regulators to maintain openness to new software-based business models and organizational formats, while also making reasonable adjustments to prevent financial crisis and terrorist financing.
Is regulations opening the door to new value business models/products?
Kayvan: Sense regulations can have a major impact on businesses driven by community engagement and network effects. Many technologies lower the barriers for individuals and small teams to generate and distribute content in competition with large central companies. Effective regulations allow individuals to be more empowered by making good actors more direct access to capital allocations and by making more mainstream audiences engage in the ecosystem and benefiting from the network effects of participating communities.
Connor: I’ll make up my mind! We have seen more mainstream institutional interest in blockchain technology. This seems to have clearer parameters, as laid out in laws like the market structure and Stubcoin bill, so I think many ambitious and exciting blockchain projects will continue to expand the issue until those bills pass. I am optimistic and will see more impactful projects being launched in areas such as decentralized AI, digital identity, and social media. We also want to look at the legal clarity of new organizational structures like DAO to ensure that these types of organizations can continue to experiment and improve. When it comes to DAO, the newly available Wyoming Donna has proven to be a major step forward.
Lewis: The doors are always open to innovation! Regulations promote innovation in a balanced and sustainable way when they work as needed, but respond to new business models that the community actually adopts and uses.
I think of the most ideal form of regulation, similar to the development of car travel. The innovators developed a car called “Horseless Carriages” that was first moved along muddy trails aimed at very different types of transportation. Seeing this innovation, the government painted paved and painted the roads. Yes, this constrained driver is somewhat constrained, but it was able to travel safer and go much faster. It was the private sector that took the lead when it came to automobile innovation. We have designed a new kind of car with new technology to drive on these roads.
No matter how much they intended at the time, regulations that try to put their fingers on scale and promote certain types of technology approaches usually wind up backfire in some way and distort the market. Innovators will continue to be created and regulators will need to keep watching and adapting these innovations rather than leading them.
Michelle: I have been in the crypto industry for the past decade, but have worked in a highly regulated area mainly dealing with financial integrity and consumer protection. In the absence of clarity of regulations, we have seen products such as business models and products that are more stable in the ecosystem. Thoughtful regulations allow us to adopt innovative crypto products more confidently and broadly by providing clarity between users to developers and trust. We have also seen more projects in the crypto industry prioritize compliance compared to 10 years ago.
As a result, there is an important opportunity for RegTech solutions to build compliance tools and processes. We do this every day with change agents taking part in the mission of streamlining workflows, reducing costs and unlocking efficiency using an automation first platform powered by secure AI. Traditional financial institutions often operate on decades-old platforms that do not design interfaces with modern technology. They struggle with fragmented data stored in different systems and formats. Jurisdictions maintain a variety of approaches to regulation, further complicating these issues.
Cryptographic platforms essentially promote compliance as blockchain technology enables transparent record management, more automated compliance checks, and an immutable audit trail. The Crypto platform is also developed in an API-first approach, making it easier with integration with RegTech products. Finally, cryptographic companies can automate regulatory compliance capabilities directly from transactional data, rather than manually aggregating data from multiple systems, increasing latency and creating possible errors. Ultimately, these factors give Crypto companies a competitive edge over Tradfi, as they can provide more accurate information to regulators while reducing compliance costs better.
David: Crypto has many powerful stories. This starts with over 16 years of boundary elastic and valuable Bitcoin due to recent technology. But I’m particularly excited about the stupidity and tokenization of real-world assets. The potential impact of a link between capital and fully configurable Turing complex global computers is not widely understood.
Money is the lifeblood of commerce, and things like instantaneous payments with little friction and the ability of banks to use digital dollar equivalents are just the beginning, with a few examples. Stablecoins are already quite popular, but pressing US regulations open the door for much wider use. It is important to ensure that stubcoin regulations are correct, with a special emphasis on minimizing run risk, maintaining the ability to combat illegal funds, and promoting interoperability.
