APAC Blockchain Conference -Every Organisation Needs a Web3 Strategy

Did my “Every organisation needs a Web3 strategy” session at APAC Blockchain Conference. As you can see I am pretty pleased to be back in front of an audience. Even better I said the words “DAOs are quite risky” and did not get beaten up. (See my previous posts about my DAO partnership concerns).

I spoke after Senator Andrew Bragg and he got the crowd well & truly warmed up. His key points were:
– We will regulate crypto this year. The bottleneck is people. Treasury has 60 open crypto positions. He made a request for folks to head to Canberra to help out (so if you have just cashed out your Bored Ape & want something to do – why not head to our capital)
– We will look to other regimes for some example regulation (specifically mentioning Singapore, Bahamas and Wyoming)
– Consumer protection is the key driver for the regs
– Digital currency exchanges can expect a bunch of regs, the most significant of which will be capital adequacy requirements (ie the exchange will need to have $$$$ in a bank somewhere in case things go wrong). He said there would be a fixed component & a variable component based on trade volumes
– He is unsure what the fixed comment will be and said “could be $5M, $10M or $50M”. At the mention of $50M a few attendees fell from their chairs. While I doubt it will be $50M, it will be a significant amount and that will drive consolidation in the digital currency exchange sector (the Senator noted there were 600 exchanges in Aust which seems ludicrous). I think there will be a flurry of DCE M&A deals soon.
– They will map the token environment and come up with 3 or 4 buckets for tokens – based on things like is the token: currency; property or a security? He was clear that this is driven significantly by tax considerations.
– There will be a transition period before the new laws apply.
– He said Canberra was a fun place to be and had restaurants and wine (a clear pitch to fill those Treasury jobs).

No doubt the Australian crypto world is lucky to have the Senator so engaged in this issue.

Thanks to Qwest for a great conference