The Stakes for U.S. Crypto Adoption
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On Tuesday, May 24th, Axios hosted a reception in Davos, Switzerland, featuring an interview between Axios’ chief financial correspondent Felix Salmon and FTX US president Brett Harrison. Their conversation honed in on the stakes for cryptocurrency adoption and regulation in the global economy.
FTX US president Brett Harrison outlined his hopes for more regulation on cryptocurrencies, FTX’s strategies for mergers and acquisitions and the economics behind the stock side of the crypto market.
- On working with existing regulation to create a comprehensive crypto framework: “Crypto trading is really a thing with a number attached to it that transfers between a buyer and a seller. And the idea that we need to completely throw out decades worth of regulation on exchanges to foster crypto trading in the U.S., I think is crazy. I think with probably existing regulation now and…power between the CFTC and SEC, they could work together in the U.S. and create a comprehensive regulatory regime for U.S. crypto exchanges.”
- On merger & acquisition strategies: “On a broader level about M&A, we’re always looking for two potential things when it comes to potential targets for FTX. One is whether we can acquire users in a quicker way than just sort of the normal growth way. For example, when we acquired Blockfolio…that was a great user acquisition play for us because we got several million customers into FTX through that acquisition. And the second is licensing. For example, our acquisition of Ledger X gave us the ability to have these CFTC licenses that often take 2 to 5 years to be able to obtain.”
- On business models for crypto on the stock market: “We’re also in the great position as a company that our revenues come from our crypto trading, that’s the high margin business right now. And so we don’t have to make money on the stock side. We don’t need to sell order flow, it can just be an extra service we provide our customers and we can acquire users that way. And so if we do want to turn that stock business into a profitable one, because maybe we see lots of volume on the exchange, we want to think very hard about the business model…”
In the View from the Top segment, Axios publisher Nick Johnston discussed regulatory outlooks for crypto as the industry keeps evolving with Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein.
- “In the U.S., because of our regulatory system and so many different governing bodies, because crypto doesn’t squarely fit into currency commodity, you know, any kind of one singular definition, there is eventually going to have to have all of that come to a head, and either a singular regulator is going to need to step up and say this is now part of our mandate, or we may even see the creation of an entirely new federal agency to oversee this technology, because certainly the rules and regulations that govern a lot of what we have in the financial markets today will not apply and will not satisfy what we need to have businesses like our and others be able to flourish in the U.S..”
Thank you Grayscale for sponsoring this event.
