AdEx CEO Ivo Georgiev Interviewed by Lawless.Tech
Ivo Georgiev: Regulating things prematurely out of fear usually leads to nothing but blocking human progress
Our CEO Ivo Georgiev was recently interviewed by lawless.tech, a channel devoted to covering the ongoing regulatory attempts to oversee and control the newest technologies.
Read an excerpt from the interview below.
lawless.tech: Different countries choose different approaches to blockchain regulation. However there is a trend of imposing restrictions and control measures. What do you think about the necessity of regulations in this new industry and the possible consequences of excessive/insufficient regulation?
Ivo Georgiev: As the question says, it’s a matter of “excessive” and “insufficient”. It’s very difficult to strike the right balance between those two extremes, but I think that we’ve already seen encouraging signs — such as positive statements on cryptocurrencies from the US — that things are headed to the right direction. There is also a number of blockchain-friendly countries, such as Estonia or Switzerland, so things are definitely looking up and regulation should not be something we should be afraid of.
In general, I believe that regulation should be limited to stopping fraud and scams, which is currently rampant. Luckily, we’ve seen US regulators, namely SEC, showing that stopping fraud is their main priority and they intend to do so without harming innovation or technological progress.
lawless.tech: Along with the popularization of ICO’s as a way to attract funding for product development, several types of token, such as app token or security token, were formed and “established” within the niche. Which type do you consider optimal in legal terms, in what conditions, why? Which type is favorable for a potential holder?
Ivo Georgiev: Obviously, utility tokens are the ones that legally are the cleanest. As a holder, I would most likely look at the project vision and implementation in general and whether the token model makes sense for it. Each token model has benefits for certain cases, and is unsuitable for other cases — so I have no specific preference.
lawless.tech: What countries would have been a good example of regulation of blockchain, artificial intelligence, and other innovative technologies.
Ivo Georgiev: Estonia, Switzerland and even the US! Estonia plans issuing its own token, Switzerland plans to issue its own cryptocurrency, and the SEC is generally showing that it’s pro-innovation. That should say enough.
lawless.tech: Some blockchain projects store users’ personal information, such as medical records, documents, etc. What solution do you see for the conflict between immutability of the information stored in a blockchain ledger and the “right to be forgotten” — the right of a person to have their personal data deleted from public access? How will the blockchain technologies legislation develop with such a contradiction?
Ivo Georgiev: We have to keep in mind that censorship resistance is not new to the blockchain. We’ve had p2p systems such as IPFS and BitTorrent for a long time now. Once something is out in a p2p system and referenced by a cryptographic hash, it will remain available. The blockchain is different in that it gives enough people (miners) an incentive to keep a copy of the data in a way that ensures that this data will be permanently available.
The truth is, considering this technology is available and will be available, no one can stop that. I hardly see a way a legislation can enforce anything over technology in this particular case.
Read the full interview on lawless.tech here: https://t.me/lawlesstech.
