Regulation And The Road Ahead For Digital Assets
By Matthew Bryce on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE
The announcement of Facebook’s cryptocurrency and the Libra blockchain project this year created ripples across governments, institutions, and media. If successful the Libra project will effectively expose 2.4 billion monthly active Facebook users to the basic concepts and financial benefits of cryptocurrency.
Since the announcement, there has been a backlash with calls for regulation in the EU and abroad that will hopefully define a common ground for the nature of regulation of Digital Assets allowing institutions to dramatically accelerate innovation.
Regardless of your opinion of Facebook or the level of your technical understanding, this may be a beneficial event for society and for the mainstream adoption of Digital Assets generally. The challenges that now arise for industry members include the appropriate deployment of capital towards blockchain infrastructure and the time taken for evolved blockchain communities to expand and create frictionless ecosystems that truly empower users. Once the benefits of distributed finance become basically understood by the average person, societies and businesses have a lot to gain. The adoption and value proposition of Digital Assets and their advantages will dramatically increase with mainstream usage.
The Digital Asset and Blockchain field evolves at a rapid rate. So much so, that even full-time professionals work extremely hard to keep track of what is continuously changing 24 hours a day globally. At the same time there are professionals who work outside this field in unrelated industries, doing their best to learn new skills and understand new technology. Ahead of us, there is a generation who will be required to learn new technological skills and adapt in the same way that they have had to adapt to the internet. This also extends to a large segment of professional society that will find it very hard to understand something that is continuously evolving.
It is our role in a technology-orientated environment to educate as many people as we can and provide services that allow Digital Assets to blend into the global economy. In order to do this, the one thing that will be required to bridge this generational gap of information is a fresh understanding of how these assets can be regulated.
Regulation is something that can make new technological advances more acceptable to people of all age groups today and allow new markets based on these technologies to develop. The legal sector has been presented with new opportunities and has joined the race to stay informed. The provision of expert advisory services to financial institutions and governments will encourage investment and efficient financial processes, allowing Digital Assets to develop at a sustainable rate.
Many companies are now aiming to achieve synchronization of their existing operations with the evolving landscape of Digital Assets and Blockchain. New forms of regulation will be required and the use of traditional methods may cause more problems than they solve. This will have to be analyzed and considered by geopolitical associations worldwide.
Regulatory clarity may be the key to allow Digital Assets to be understood by everyone of all ages and benefit both centralized and decentralized entities. It is crucial now that current barriers for larger institutions decrease with this change. Regulation for Digital Assets will hopefully be clarified sooner rather than later as large tech companies like Facebook aim to get involved within the financial sector.
