(I am sorry for the Spice Girls reference, I was just having a hard time thinking up a title.)
Crypto firms snap up ex-regulators, but some struggle to keep them.
This is the title from a recent Financial Times article. The write up mostly focuses on how many people are leaving the public sector to join crypto firms and then finding out they just don’t fit in. They are quitting after only a few months. For example, from the article:
Brian Brooks, former head of the OCC banking regulator, resigned in August from his role as US chief executive of Binance after just three months. Brett Redfearn, a former high-ranking SEC official, spent four months in a role at Coinbase, the listed crypto exchange, before also leaving in August.
There were plenty more examples in the article and I don’t see how this is a big surprise to anyone. The government has shown that is has a real lack of understanding of the issues and is way behind on where they should be. I know that crypto companies think by hiring people that work for the SEC that they will be better prepared for the regulations that are coming. It appears, though, that they are hiring people that don’t understand the crypto model and then these new-hires quickly get frustrated and quit. I am not sure that this is helping and it is actually shining a light on a real issue.
The fact that these people high up in the SEC can’t fit in with crypto companies is just more of a sign that the SEC is ill-prepared to take on the regulating of decentralized currencies. One more example from the article I will point to, because the person basically says that government officials just can’t figure it out, including himself:
This week Chris Giancarlo, the former chair of derivatives market regulator the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, stepped down from his role on the board of BlockFi, a crypto lending platform, four months after taking on the position. “It is a challenge for regulators to find what their right point of engagement with this market is and I think all of us need to think about our priorities,” Giancarlo told the FT.
I am sure these are smart people that are highly educated. It is a little nerve-racking to read how poorly they perform when out of the public sector and forced to think within a defi world, though.
Resources
https://www.ft.com/content/1f8945ce-1af7-4545-b060-d538bb7b7ac8