Pulse Check: Digital Assets
Joshua C. Zive, senior principal in Bracewell’s Policy Resolution Group, and Kyle J. Spencer, a PRG principal, discuss the potential impact of the 2024 elections on digital asset policy. Learn more from our website https://www.bracewell.com/resources/p...
Transcript:
Josh Zive: Today we’re diving into the potential impact of the 2024 elections on digital asset policy, and by this, we mean everything from regulatory expectations to implication for America’s competitive edge in the global market. Kyle and I are here to impact what this election outcome could mean for the entire future of digital assets.
Let’s start with a little level sitting. What do we mean when we say digital assets? Because I certainly know this is not a phrase I was terribly familiar with until I started doing this work. But simply, digital assets can be anything from online documents to media files to social media accounts to more complicated things like crypto currency or non-fungible tokens, NFTs. These types of assets either have intrinsic value or commercial value, and unlike traditional assets, these assets require special legal considerations because they exist solely in the digital world. This means there’s special issues surrounding ownership, sales, transfer and the ability to access these digital assets. And as these industries grow and as more personal and business transactions move online, the legal landscape for managing and protecting these digital assets has become both increasingly complex and more important to the US and global economies. So understanding how to navigate this terrain is crucial for both protecting digital holdings and ensuring compliance with these emerging regulations for businesses in a whole wide range of industries, but particularly those that part of the digital asset industry.
So with that said, we had big elections, and we’re trying to figure out what this means. You know, why it’s important and why it’s particularly important in the context of digital assets? So, let me turn to Kyle. Kyle, why is this important?
Kyle Spencer: Yeah, Josh, so to understand the implications of yesterday’s election, it’s helpful to quickly zoom out and describe why Washington has been talking about digital assets, what problems lawmakers and regulators are trying to solve. First, it’s clear that digital assets are here to stay, and there is a general recognition that the current regulatory regime around this technology is rife with overlapping mandates, misaligned objectives that has resulted in a patchwork of regulations that not only fails to protect the public, a la Silicon Valley Bank and FTX, but it also chills the development of this market.
Josh Zive: Well, and of course, Kyle, you know, a huge additional burden to this market developing over recent years, and particularly during the Biden administration, is what observers would call regulatory uncertainty if they were being nice and if they were being mean, they would call it arbitrary or overreaching SEC enforcement. Now, with the election of Donald Trump, we know that the current chair of the SEC, Gary Gensler, is not going to be in that position much longer, and Donald Trump has been very vocal about his intentions to replace Gensler, even pledging him to fire him on quote, day one. Now, while it’s customary for the SEC chair to step down following a presidential transition, Trump’s approach is particularly stark because it’s underscoring his commitment to focusing the SEC on reshaping their approach to digital assets. And whomever Trump appoints to the SEC is expected to gain approval, is expected to work very hard, and their position to be based on approval from the cryptocurrency community and other players in the digital asset industry. And this is a clear departure from Gensler’s approach, and indicates why companies need to be watching this very close. But it also begs the question, if SEC overreach is a problem, what the heck is Congress going to do about it? So that then leads one to ask, how are members of Congress, how are the lawmakers actually talking about this? What are they thinking about doing, and is there any chance for actual legislation on this?
See the full transcript from our website https://www.bracewell.com/resources/p...
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