Coinbase, Square, Fidelity form crypto ‘innovation council’ — but why?
Crypto industry insiders Coinbase, Square, Fidelity, and Paradigm are forming the Crypto Council for Innovation (CCI) — a group to lobby policymakers and government reps to move legislation in a crypto-positive direction.
CCI says it will focus efforts on areas where crypto “has the greatest potential to transform lives and livelihoods for the better” and create:
- Stronger economic growth and more jobs.
- A financial system that’s more inclusive and accessible.
- Enhanced privacy and security.
Speaking with the Wall Street Journal, crypto fund Paradigm co-founder Fred Ehrsam said the industry is in “very early stages,” and finds itself at a “mainstream inflection point” — much like the internet once was.
Ehrsam co-founded Coinbase with Brian Armstrong in 2012, served as its president until 2017, and will reportedly shift to an “independent director” position at the crypto exchange when it goes public next week.
“It’s very fragile while it’s in that stage,” Ehrsam told WSJ, which first reported on the group. Policymakers want to balance risk and reward, but even industry insiders “struggle to predict where this will go in the coming decade.”
“It was very hard to say where the internet was going to go,” Ehrsam added.
Dispelling crypto misinformation will… create economic growth?
The CCI’s landing page says they’ll unlock “the promise of crypto,” and a Twitter thread — while aspirational — doesn’t specify how it intends to accomplish any of its lofty goals.
Still, the CCI’s first tweet relished in the idea that crypto is “going to change everything.”
[Read more: Jack Dorsey whipped out his Bitcoin clock and Twitter went wild]
Protos reached out to CCI to learn more about their stance regarding certain regulations pressing to the industry right now (like the FATF and FinCEN proposals), but a spokesperson wasn’t immediately available.