Bertrand Pérez, chief operating officer of the Web3 Foundation, one of the companies behind the Polkadot blockchain, said a certain level of regulation was necessary in the cryptocurrency space, as long as those responsible left room for innovation.
Speaking to Cointelegraph at Paris Blockchain Week on Wednesday, Perez said he saw some areas of concern when it comes to regulating the space, including a recent European Parliament bill on noncustodial wallets, but in general those in the industry are trying to help policymakers understand Web3.. According to the chief operating officer of the Web3 Foundation, some lawmakers are still making decisions “too quickly or uneducated” in the space. However, the Libra project, backed by Facebook in 2019, may have been the catalyst many in the EU needed to understand the urgency of moving forward with a regulatory framework.
“We have to be aware that we have to evolve in a world in which regulation is not necessarily bad”Perez said. “You need some level of regulation for protection, right? The key point is where the line is drawn and we try to help draw that line so that it makes sense to regulators so that there are enough frameworks and protections from their perspective, while leaving the growth of innovation.”
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The director of operations of the Web3 Foundation added that the narrative around cryptocurrencies being used for illicit activities was one of the main issues plaguing lawmakers. Once it has been debunked, according to Perez, regulators could “start talking about digging deeper into the technology” and addressing different features and applications in one framework:
“I think it is important that politicians are involved. Not just regulators because policymakers are really the representatives of the people […] I would tell them that we are here facing a real paradigm shift in terms of technology, maybe we are facing something bigger than the Internet and the value that it can generate is at least the value of the Internet”.
A former senior director at PayPal, Perez was CEO of the Libra Association—later renamed Diem—before joining the Web3 Foundation in September 2021. Ethereum co-founder and Polkadot and Kusama creator Gavin Wood, who coined the term Web3 in 2004, heads the foundation and claimed to have been developing additional blockchain bridges and parachains for the project.
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