Co-founder of the Ethereum project Vitalik Buterin spoke about the current problems of regulating the cryptocurrency sector in general and in the United States in particular. According to him, opaque projects without specific value were in a more advantageous position than well-thought-out and carefully organized ones.
Thus, Buterin commented on the publication of a member of the Ethereum Foundation under the pseudonym Jason on the Warpcast site. He referred to a statement by the blockchain co-founder in X (formerly Twitter) dated October 2022.
Let's remember that that month there was a two-hour debate between the former CEO of the FTX exchange, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), and the CEO of ShapeShift, Eric Voorhees, as part of the Bankless podcast.
After them, SBF faced a barrage of criticism. He proposed "voluntary standards" that he believed could make the industry easier to regulate. In particular, the SBF supported the oversight of interface developers for accessing DeFi projects.
In response, Buterin proposed his own "rules", which included:
- leverage restrictions;
- audit report of the smart contract source code and the project as a whole;
- higher entry threshold instead of minimum capital requirements.
“Even now, I still think all these “rules” would be extremely helpful in reducing the number of scammers/opportunists and making the industry safer,” Jason commented.
In response, Buterin said that the main problem with regulating the industry in general and in the United States in particular remains a selective approach. According to the expert, projects with minimal value operate freely on the market, while others, well-thought-out and carefully organized, face sanctions.
Here, Buterin probably referred to the US Securities and Exchange Commission's lawsuit against Consensys. The latter is the developer of the MetaMask crypto wallet.
“I would like to think that issuing a token without a clear rationale and explanation of how it will retain and grow economic value in the future is a riskier undertaking. Conversely, by following certain basic rules, the project could avoid scrutiny. This will require the conscientious participation of both regulators and market participants,” Buterin emphasized.
