CFTC Chair Reveals The Government’s New Plan For Crypto & AI | Mike Selig

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slash podcast terms and conditions apply. But I do think that that has been a big

disservice to the American people that the regulators, especially in the last administration,

who never got to use this stuff. We're trying to kill it here in the United States. So creating

a framework where at least regulators can experiment with it, maybe use stable points,

things like that. You know, I think that's something that we should change in the country.

What's going on guys? Today we've got a very special conversation. We have the 16th chairman

of the CFTC Mike Celeg is here to join us. And in this conversation, we're going to talk about

the three most important technologies that are facing financial markets. We're going to talk about

artificial intelligence, prediction markets, and crypto. And how we are thinking about allowing

people to take risk in the market, but also how we can go and make sure that people don't break

through rules. One of the interesting things about regulators is that they have to encourage

innovation. They have to encourage the risk taking, but they also have to make sure that our markets

are safe and sound. And Mike's got a very unique view because he used to use these technologies

in the private sector before he joined his regulator. And so he's got a very interesting insight

into how they're thinking about this. And I think you're going to be very surprised by the

approach they're taking. Here's my conversation with Mike Celeg. All right, Chairman,

I thought a great place to start the conversation is obviously crypto has been in the crosshairs

of the SEC, the CFTC. There's been a ton of pressure on the industry over the last couple

of years. It seems like there's been a 180 now. CFTC and SEC not only are working together,

but also seem to be trying to encourage innovation in this space. Can you talk a little bit about just

the philosophy of these two organizations coming together? And then what do you guys hope to accomplish

by providing this tailwind to the industry? Well, for so many years, the agencies have not been

able to cooperate, coordinate work together. And so we've wound up with this patchwork of

rules and regulations that are often inconsistent. And we saw with the last administration, Gary

Gensler's SEC, let a war on crypto. They they brought enforcement actions against all sorts of

builders and innovative technology companies. And then the CFTC really did nothing about it.

It just kind of stood on the sidelines. And now Chairman Atkins and I are working together,

but we're collaborating. We're coordinating. We've launched project crypto as a joint initiative

between the agencies. And that's intended to harmonize definitions for crypto. It's intended to

harmonize our guidance, our interpretations, and our regulatory philosophies. And that's really

important. So you come into the SEC as a builder and you might face one sets of rules and regulations.

And then a different at the the CFTC in the past. But today we're working together to make

shorts consistent, whichever framework you wind up in. It's also important to note that we

have a memorandum of understanding now between the agencies. So we're coordinating our staff

efforts. And so you go and deal with one set of staff at an agency. And they're also talking to

the other agency to make sure things are consistent. They were surveilling the markets that are

becoming more and more interconnected with new technologies and products and all of that. So

it's really important, I think, as a country to make sure that our agencies are working together,

have the same guiding philosophies and are really ensuring that our markets are the best in the

world. Now what's interesting is you worked inside the SEC as part of a task force early in the

Trump administration, you know, the CFTC chairman. And when I saw the memorandum of understanding,

the first thing I thought was like, should these just be the same organization? Like, should you

just put them together and have like a regulatory body? Or do you still think that there's a lot of

value to having kind of two different groups that have different sets of rules and different parts

of the market to regulate? It's important to have both agencies. So the CFTC is a risk management

regulator. We regulate the derivatives markets, which to me are some of the most creative

financial instruments in the world. You can have a derivative on just about anything and everything.

The SEC is very focused, capital formation regulator. They regulate public offerings of

securities, they regulate those markets in the secondary. And so having the defined roles is

really important, but we need to work together, we need to coordinate. I've learned a lot at both

agencies and I think those learnings are critical and ensuring that we lead as a country, that we

have roles that make sense at both agencies, but very defined roles. And I think it's important

to keep them that way. Now, there really seems to be a couple of technologies that are all distinct

yet bleeding together. So we have artificial intelligence, we have prediction markets, we have crypto,

you know, all of this is very exciting. But how do you look at these technologies? Do you try to

fit them all into one set of rules? Or is there like a certain set of rules you guys look at when

it comes to artificial intelligence, certain set for prediction markets, certain set for crypto?

I think these are some of the most transformative technologies that we've seen.

They're really generational technologies. I'm excited to be at the forefront leading the

safety seat to help develop rules for them. And I don't think those rules should be uniform across

all these technologies. It's not one size fits all. We need purpose fit rules that make sense,

but they also need to be merit neutral. We can't be saying, you know, AI is fine, but crypto is not

our prediction markets don't make sense, but we like crypto. So we're trying to take an approach of

making sure that our rules are consistent, coherent, rational, but tailored to the technology.

And I do think that these technologies really are synergistic. So we've got blockchain

rails that are a response to some of the debanking, the operation choke point 2.0,

the tendency of government to take our assets. You know, we saw it with, you know, the gold in

the early days, right? The government was able to confiscate that. And so having the ability to

self custody or assets engage on chain freely, censorship resistant blockchain rails are terrific.

Prediction markets are a response to a lot of the gatekeepers in the media where they were

putting out fake polls, fake news reports. You can check that with the ability to put assets at

stake, skin in the game, and really take a position on a future outcome. And then AI and automation

in our markets are really critical. I think agents are going to be some of the most effective traders

in our markets, but also helping us be more productive as every day individuals and compute is a

real new commodity that's really exciting to us at the CFDC as well. I want to dig into each one

of these technologies a little bit. So let's start maybe with prediction markets. That one's been

in the headlines quite a bit. I think your position in correcting from wrong is, hey, this should be

federally kind of regulated. And there should be one set of rules across the country. States obviously

have a very different opinion. Some of them have gone after some of the prediction markets, both the

companies and the individuals, which I think is a little concerning to people in the industry. But at

the same time, there's then the overlap of like sports gambling and what is a sports gambling

just made me talk about like, how are you viewing the market and kind of what would your desired

outcome be here from regulation standpoint? So revatives are some of the most creative and

interesting financial instruments that we have. They can be offered on virtually any type of

underlying asset. Really what you're doing is taking a position on a future outcome in an event

or the price of an asset that can be traditional assets like agricultural products, metals, all

that crypto now is a new asset class, but also events like sports and politics and geopolitics.

And so it's really important that we have the ability to manage risks, but also speculate on

these things and the United States has always been the most free market country. You know,

Ronald Reagan said if we lose freedom here, we've got no place else and we need to protect our

markets for that reason as well. So having that innovation, I think, is great in our markets.

And the commodity exchange act are authorizing statute, the CFTC set up a federal regulatory

framework for derivatives, for derivatives on all types of commodities. And the definition of

commodity includes all of these things because we don't want gaps in our regulatory framework.

It doesn't matter if it's sports or politics or anything else. The prior administration really

tried to hold up a lot of these interesting products and sports and politics. And the court said

that was arbitrary and capricious. It struck that down. And so now we've got the floodgates open

with all these new products. Unfortunately, the prior administration was so busy suing everyone

that they didn't put rules in place to regulate the stuff. And so we're moving quickly to get the

right investor protections, customer protections and guardrails around the products and the exchanges.

And the exchanges have been great partners in that setting up their own insider trading programs

and so on and so forth. So we expect these markets to flourish here in the US. We're going to take

a free market approach and make sure that we're checking our news media on the fake polls and the

hoaxes and all of that here in the United States. When I look on the platforms, the various

contracts that they provide, there are some that I think would fall more in like an economic or

investor seat. So maybe you can go and speculate on will Tesla beat its delivery number or not for

cars, right? And I think that it's taking a macro thing that people are already doing and it's

boiling it down and trying to isolate a data point. I don't see a lot of people who are like,

hey, there's an issue there. I think there may be questions as to will that become popular or not,

but I think people generally understand that. Then I see markets that are, you know, whether they're

mentioned markets or betting on the color of a tie or the length of a conference meeting or

something. And those I think are where people are like, hey, this feels more gambling than it does,

you know, kind of a financial investment. How do you all from a regulator seat like do you start

to try to determine what is in bounds and out of bounds or is it more so the contract is the

contract structure we want to regulate that? And then what people are actually speculating on

within the contract structure is more for the individual companies to decide derivatives are

derivatives. So the underlying asset, even if it is the silly stuff about the tie that Andrew

Sorkin gave me a hard time about as well. But the reality is some of this stuff is readily susceptible

to manipulation and the exchanges are the first line of defense. They should not be listing

contracts under our statute. It's prohibited to list contracts that are readily susceptible

to manipulation. The exchanges review these contracts they self-certify them. We have the ability

to reject them. The issue has been and I don't want to be the guy that regulates by enforcement

that was Gary Gensler. What we want to do is put out clear guidelines and guardrails around

this stuff so that the exchanges can do their job. Unfortunately, the lawsuits and all of that really

some of these things got lost in translation. So we're making sure that the exchanges understand

their obligations. We put out guidance a few weeks ago that explains some of that. Certainly,

there's differences of opinion and we want to work through that with the exchanges and with

different stakeholders. We put out a request for comments on a potential rule proposal in this

space. So we're evaluating those comments and making sure we get things right. But the bottom

line is sure there are contracts that are derivatives contracts that can be manipulated and maybe

they shouldn't be in our markets then because the statute tells us they shouldn't be inciter trading.

All that's prohibited. A lot of the criticism you get and the concern is just a lack of education

and we're making sure that we get the right information out there. But certainly, there's

disagreements as to what's manipulative, what's not. We are working with the sports leagues,

working with different stakeholders to get that right. So I recently talked to one of the

Robinhood executives and he was talking about they don't list mention markets and I'm sure it's

because of this kind of manipulation component. If you then go and you say, okay, well, that is

manipulation. Well, where does the insider trading kind of rules lie? And one of the things that I

find interesting is if you go back to that Tesla example, if you work at let's say the people

providing the windshields and you see that every time we pump out a bunch more windshield,

somehow Tesla's deliveries are higher. It's almost like indirect knowledge or I think there was

this example recently of Jeff Bezos going to the Super Bowl, but he actually, but people knew he

wasn't and people were basically trading on a rumor. You're the expert, right? I have no clue what

the rule should be or should not be. And frankly, it gets I think kind of a slippery slope if you

start trying to regulate rumors versus like concrete evidence. And so is there like a general framework

for people who are actually participating in these markets who frankly, they may not have,

you know, general councils or compliance people, etc. They're obviously incentivized to make money.

How should they think about, you know, when they have inside information in these markets versus not?

The exchanges will be reviewing the contracts, as I mentioned. And my aim for that review is to be

consistent with the statute to make sure the exchanges understand their obligations. So when contracts

get listed, they're kind of filtered through that initial process of are these things readily

susceptible to manipulation. They're listed. They shouldn't be and investors should be able to

kind of appreciate that and respect that they're buying something that's not going to be manipulable

or easily manipulable rather. But of course, there's always a risk of insider trading manipulation,

even if something's not readily susceptible to it. And insider trading is a type of market manipulation

or fraud that's prohibited under our statute. But there's a range of kind of insider information,

not all of its material non-public information that's been misappropriated, that's prohibited in

our markets. So somebody could obtain insider non-public information that's just because they had

access to, you know, a facility or it's all something and hedging firms and hedge funds and

exchanges and other types of businesses are trading on that information on a regular basis,

right? Because they, for example, might have cameras that see what's going on in the Walmart

parking lot and that sort of thing, that's not the type of insider information that we're concerned

about or I wouldn't call it necessarily insider information. It's just information, right?

And our markets are efficient so that gets priced in very quickly. But when you take

information, you have a duty to, for example, your employer or your sports team or someone else

and you misappropriate that and trade on it, that's illegal. A good example is, you know,

the trainer for an athlete, they know someone's got an injury on the team and aren't going to play

in a game. So they go and trade on that. They have a duty to the team or to their hospital or

whoever is a physician, not to trade on that. So we're certainly monitoring for that. That's why

we've partnered with the Sports League to make sure we have access to the right information. We

communicate with them on a regular basis and then we're also making sure that the exchanges have

those relationships and are excluding participants that are likely to be able to trade on inside

information. If we now go from prediction markets, let's start bleeding over into crypto.

Obviously, somebody is going to launch a decentralized prediction market and they will claim,

oh, we can't control it. People are throwing this up, etc. That was something that came out of

the crypto world from an exchange perspective previously. How do you start to deal maybe not just

with prediction markets, but decentralization in general, right? And if you overlay even maybe AI

agents with decentralization, it does feel like maybe who you guys can go to for holding someone

accountable becomes a little bit harder in a world where these technologies start to get introduced.

Right. And on-chain certainly doesn't mean that regulations don't apply, but there's a range of

things, right? You're looking at whether there's an intermediate area, whether there's really someone

who's an actor centralized and kind of the person that would be regulated for the activity.

But some of our laws and regulations actually apply regardless of whether there's an

intermediary. So certain types of financial instruments like derivatives can't be offered,

for example, to retail participants off of regulated exchange. So just because something is on

a blockchain doesn't mean it's safe and not subject to our regulation. But that said, I think it's

important to create a space for these technologies in our financial markets. And so we are evaluating

things like innovation exemptions to allow for on-chain markets to flourish here in the US,

even though some of our statutes really are focused on pushing that onto centralized gatekeepers

and exchanges. But it's important to have the right investor protections, have customer

protections there. And so even if someone's able to take their assets in self-custody,

perhaps we're regulating certain points of the flow of the transaction.

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Now, artificial intelligence agents are obviously going to become very big and some people are

using things internally to automate their operations or their actions, whatever. But you mentioned

the AI bots may become some of the best traders in the market. I think there's a difference

between automation and autonomous. When it is just pure automation, obviously it's very

clear who set those rules, parameters, put the agent in business. When it's autonomous,

do you hold the person who gets the economic benefit? Can you not regulate the AI agent?

Is it the model provide? It gets super complicated very quick and I don't expect you to have all

the answers, but how are you guys just at least thinking about this right now?

Well, it's such groundbreaking technology that we really have to make sure we get it right.

I am concerned that we over-regulate and strangle some of the technology here in the United

States and so I'm taking a very much minimum effective dose of regulation approach where we're

looking at what's happening in terms of the models and how they're being deployed and used

and making sure that we're regulating the actors, the persons that are engaging in the

regulated activity and not just software developers. The software developers are the ones

building the tools, but they're not actually engaging in the financial transactions or using it

to engage in regulated activity. There was a great court case that dealt with, actually

Uniswap, the decentralized exchange protocol, talking about how you don't go after Tesla for

the self-driving car that is used to rob a bank, you're going after the bank robbers. We're

certainly looking to make sure we're regulating the traders, the persons that are using them.

For example, if you use a software tool to help you engage in trading activity,

the trading activity is still regulated, but you're using a tool just like you're using your personal

device or your computer. We're trying to get that regulation right and there are a lot of

considerations as we're doing it, but one area that I find fascinating is these autonomous

agents that are engaging in their own trading activity, potentially for their own benefits. You

could put a bunch of funds in a smart contract and let the smart contract run on its own. That

might actually be attached to a very sophisticated AI and it's able to make better predictions

on outcomes than anybody else. That's going to help us generate better data. I think we're

going to see a lot of competition between these different AI models on the financial scale

in the prediction markets in other areas and that's where I think you see the marriage of

blockchain, prediction markets and AI and it's really a fascinating place to be for a regulator.

It does become even more interesting. I think it's one thing if I like create an AI agent,

even if it's autonomous and I say, you know, here's some money, go make me money. It's very clear

like it's for my economic benefit. I think that now there's a lot of talk of, well, what if the AI

agent spends up its own like sub agents who then have a wallet who then are like making money

for itself as an like, I mean, you can get very meta in this, you know, quickly, but it does

feel like maybe there is, you know, there's robo advising, there's high frequency trading, like

there are some components that you guys can put here. And it also I think depends on if it's

institutional investors who kind of have certain guardrails compliance, you know, they're holding

their data all that versus like the retail, you know, quote, unquote in the mom's basement who

expends this stuff up and is a little bit more like wild, wild west. I don't know, I don't envy you

trying to figure this stuff out. Yeah. And if you think about it, for example, you know, you're

in exchange that's regulated by us, do you allow some of these AIs to participate? So maybe that's

like the first line of defense, right? I think I'm hearing it's like that the exchanges with

their prediction markets, other places like really that's where you guys think that you can kind

of put some rules to the road and limit what people can do so they stay within rules.

Right. And who are we protecting regulating the software itself? We regulate intermediaries

in our markets and registrants. So it's important to make sure we stick to our mandate as a regulator

not creep into software or into other asset classes that are beyond our scope. But we're certainly

thinking about all of that as we're approaching our regulation of, for example, trading advisors,

are they using AI? Well, we regulate the advisors where we can regulate their use of the AI,

but to the extent the AI is just operating in the ether, we don't necessarily regulate that.

Since we're making a habit of talking about all the hardest problems you probably are thinking

through on a day-to-day basis, image generation is another one that I think is very weird and

unusual. So we have seen the use of memes in the public stock market, not to manipulate the market,

but obviously roaring kitty, you know, it's kind of the lean forward meme, things like that.

I think that the world's richest man one time said he'd rather be a meme dealer than he would

be a billionaire, easy to say when you're a billionaire. But now if you can easily create images

that are not true, right? Or there, you know, some sort of kind of concocted image,

that feels again like, is it malicious? Is it not like how much of it is like intent versus,

do you have to at some point just say like, hey, you cannot use AI, you know, generated images

if you're an investor or if you're participating in the market, like how do you regulate that stuff?

Well, I think the the private markets have solutions, you're blockchain technologies are great

one, right? If you can timestamp things and make sure there's an identifier for each meme or

artificial intelligence generated post, you can verify if it's real or if it's generated by AI,

et cetera. And so I think that's really important. Having these technologies here in the US is

critical. A lot of the stuff about this stuff being all hot air and, you know, ICOs and scams

and this and that is completely false. And that's why as regulators were working to make sure

that the United States is the crypto capital of the world. And I think it is today. But the

technology is really important here in the US. You can't have AI without blockchain. I think

blockchain is a key check on that. One thing that I always find fascinating as I've met more people

kind of in these different regulatory posts, I always like to ask like, these technologies,

it's very hard to regulate them if you don't use them yourself. But there's obviously limitations

in your role. And so like, I don't know what you've been able to disclose in terms of like,

do you own crypto? Do you not? Do you use the prediction markets? Do you get like a demo account?

And they're like, hey, we actually want you to try to use this stuff. Just talk maybe about the

different technologies and like how you think about, you know, using them, but also that the

fiduciary duties and, you know, disclosures you have to make. Well, I'm one of the rare few that

got to use it before going into government. So I fell down the Bitcoin rabbit hole back in 2011

and got to really test the technology. But today, of course, I've divested what we cannot hold

digital assets, especially if we're regulating it. So there are some exceptions for certain people,

but we're bound by very strict ethics requirements. So I don't own any of the assets today. But of

course, our staff, unfortunately, have similarly not been able to participate in these markets. But

we've been working to get demos in place and make sure they understand it. But I do think that

that has been a big disservice to the American people that the regulators, especially in the

last administration, who never got to use this stuff. We're trying to kill it here in the United

States. So creating a framework where at least the regulars can experiment with it, maybe use

stable coins, things like that is very important. It's silly. You can't hold a crypto kitty or,

you know, a cromi squiggle or an NFT or that sort of thing because they view them as financial assets.

You know, I think that's something that we should change in the country.

I just won the mentioned market of you saying crypto kitty, but not played.

But I do think it could even be like a diminimous amount. If you go on the prediction market,

I don't think anyone's got a problem with $100. I think it's different when they see politicians

or something going and making millions of millions of dollars. Then obviously a little bit

different severity standpoint. You guys have an innovation task force that you recently announced.

Talk about what this is and kind of what your goal with it is.

Well, I was lucky to get to serve at the SEC on the SEC's crypto task force together with

Commissioner Perse who led up the task force. And I found it to be just an incredible experience

and an integrate initiative within the SEC because you had so many of these technologists,

builders, creators, as well as the larger financial institutions who for so many years had no

place to go. They'd come in and try to get a meeting with Mr. Gensler and walk out with

a subpoena. And that's no longer the case of the SEC. Thanks, Commissioner Perse's vision.

And I wanted to do something similar at the CFTC. So we have a little bit of a different take on it.

We're going to be focused on crypto, but also prediction markets in AI. Because as I mentioned,

I think these all really go hand in hand in their critical technologies that we have to get the

right policy here in the United States for. So we're announcing that recently here in the United

States and looking to get the builders and innovators and financial firms coming into the office

to meet with us. We're also going to use the task force to develop purpose fit rules and regulations

and policy. So it's both a vehicle for folks to come in and talk to us, but also to work together

with the different divisions within the agency. Who as I mentioned, they really haven't used crypto

technology. So we're bringing in some great folks from the outside who have worked at law firms

and technologists and data scientists to join the team, but also bringing on some of the staff

from within the divisions. So we've really got a great group of individuals who are going to lead

on this front and develop some purpose fit rules. And we've also got this innovation advisory

committee, which is comprised of some of the leading CEOs at both crypto firms, people like Brian

Armstrong, but then also people at the traditional large exchanges like Terry Duffy and Jeff

Sprecker and Adina Friedman. And then some of the new entrants in prediction markets like Shane

Copeland and Tark Monsor. So it's really a great coalition. And we've also got some great academics

and industry groups on the team. And that's going to be I think another vehicle to get input from

the public and from the outside to make sure we're not just regulating from an ivory tower and

telling everyone what to do. We're figuring out what the markets want to do and setting the right

rules of the road for them. I think where maybe some innovation is meeting regulation is on clarity

and a lot of stablecoin yield stuff, et cetera. And I've heard both sides argument like in pretty

in depth in private meetings. And what I've told both sides is your both, right? Right? Like,

you know, like they they both have a hint of truth to what they're saying and that's why they're

digging their heels in. How can regulators serve as a little bit, you know, I think people think

of you generally is like a referee almost. But also the regulars that I've talked with in the

past who felt like they really, you know, did a service to the market was like they also helped

to bridge the gap sometimes when you have people on different sides of issues. And yeah, you've

got to be the referee, but you also kind of have to be the the mediator a little bit and get these

groups to come together. Talk a little bit about that. Well, the regulators are subject matter experts.

You know, we spend all day working on the same statute, the commodity exchange act at the CFTC.

And then all the rules and regulations that were constantly developing and have developed over

the years. So we're subject matter experts. We really understand how our rules work, how our

statute works, how to implement. And then the staff are really narrowly focused. So they might

be focused on a single provision or a single area within our statute. And we provide technical

assistance to the Hill. So we're working with the legislators to make sure they get things right.

But it's really important that we're at the table and helping to drive policy. So the Hill uses

us as a resource, which I think is great. But sometimes people get so lost in the big picture.

And it really derails things. I think it's important that we remain focused and make sure that we

get the right policy in place. So we're glad to be at the table on that. You know, I think some of

these issues around yield and so on and so forth. You're losing the real core aim here. We need to

make sure that we have future proof legislation in place to protect the industry here in the US.

And some of these little details, things like yield. I'd prefer for that to be worked out with

the regulators. You know, we've got great potential regulators in the OCC and in the FDIC and the

Treasury and others. So I'd like to hopefully have legislation that's bigger picture and let the

regulators work out some of the details. One area that the crypto folks are very excited about. Now

I think tradfa is getting more excited as perps and kind of bringing those to the United States.

Talk a little bit about where we are on that front. We're getting very close. Everyone loves to

talk about perps, but it's really unfortunate that perps have flooded offshore. You know, around

2017, 2018, these took off and for some reason our markets for so averse to it. And I think we're

for the same reason we're concerned about crypto in the early days. But the product's really

interesting. It allows for kind of a unique exposure to really any asset class, but we're focused

at the CFTC on studying with crypto. I know a lot of other asset classes may not work for and

may kind of take liquidity from our traditional markets. So we're going to start with crypto. We're

getting very close. The biggest issue with perps has been how do we characterize them under our

statute? So the history of our statute is before we had the Dodd-Frank Act, which amended our

act under after the financial crisis, we start off with just futures contracts and options.

And so it was very clear what a product was was either an option or a futures contract. But now we

have swaps, which are much broader in their definition. And so there's been questions as to

are these truly contracts for future delivery? If there's a perpetual existence, and what we got

as a result of this was these long dated futures contracts. So Coinbase and others have launched

kind of these quasi perps where it's a 50 year time horizon to settlement. And that looks a little

bit like a perp, but it's not perpetual. And so we're going to fix that. We're going to make sure

that it's possible to launch perpetuals here in the U.S. Hopefully in the next handful of weeks,

to a month, hopefully. So we're getting very close. And I think that's going to be a great win

for the industry and for the American people. And we're going to make sure there's the right

guardrails around it and all of that. So it's well regulated. In a weird way, you are like the

chief risk officer of the finance industry, right? Like you're supposed to help people take risk,

but also make sure that they don't go too crazy or break rules. Is that fair?

Well, our statute requires us to regulate the markets. And that's what we're going to do.

I grew up as a lawyer. That's my former role before entering the private sector. And I very much

take that role seriously where I'm looking to the statute. I'm looking to our rules and regulations

to make sure that we're fulfilling our mission as an agency and no more. My view is that we need

the minimum of those minimum effective dose of regulation, no more, no less. We're not going to

overregulate and kind of strangle industries or be paternalistic and merit-based as we've seen

in the past. And that's where I think the concern comes from, hey, this agency is trying to drive

my industry offshore. Why is that? That's not our role. Our role as a regulator is to set the

rules and then let the markets decide, let people engage in the transactions they want to engage in,

use the technologies they want to engage in, just making sure we don't take the risks that

our statute requires us to regulate. We're not here to potentially regulate the markets,

but we're here to make sure that there are investor protections in place.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. We're doing it in the future.

Thank you.