Unlike the color, costumes, and craziness of the big-name crypto conferences like ETHDenver, the North American Blockchain Summit was a buttoned-up convergence of folks from all sides of crypto. 

As North America’s premier policy conference, the floor was filled with presidential hopefuls, senators and congressmen, representatives, policy heads, ex-military, and bitcoin miners. Held in Fort Worth Texas, the first city in the United States to mine bitcoin, a collective sense of pride and patriotism permeated the stages and side conversations. 

A welcome video played on loop, with personal recordings from pro-crypto representatives such as Patrick McHenry and French Hill, followed by the audience standing, for the national anthem, hand over chest. Vivek Ramaswamy, Republication presidential candidate and the first to report crypto holdings, launched into his opening keynote unveiling a digital assets policy framework he’ll codify if put into power. 

Ramaswamy introduced his ‘Three Freedoms of Crypto’ framework and the critical need to protect the industry as not separate to saving America, but integral to it – bringing into focus just how consequential the 2024 election will be. 

“This is not just about freedom. It’s about reviving our national identity itself,” he said, instead of choking out innovation due to insecurity. 

“We were born as pioneers, the explorers, the unafraid, the people who would not be stopped by somebody telling us what we can and cannot achieve. That is the American way. America is the country that allows you to achieve the maximum of your God-given potential without anybody, any system, or any government standing in your way. That is the founding spirit of this country, and that is what we have to restore,” said Ramaswamy. 

The youngest person to ever run for U.S. president as a Republican explained the three basic principles of his crypto policy framework: the freedom to code, freedom to financial self-reliance, and freedom to innovate without regulatory overreach. 

He sees code as a form of speech that should be protected by the First Amendment. “Converting code into some kind of crime in its own right, whatever the form of that code is, is itself an unconstitutional violation,” Ramaswamy said. 

Regarding financial self-reliance, he believes the Bank Secrecy Act, and many elements of it today, are also fundamentally unconstitutional. He compared how privacy of personal data was treated in the wake of the Patriot Act with anti-money laundering regulations and Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements. “Any regulation that touches self-hosted wallets will end on my watch,” the presidential candidate promises.

Ramaswamy also clarified that he’ll “rescind most, if not all, of the SEC regulations as it applies to crypto” and slash 75 percent of federal bureaucrats. “That’s how you restore honesty and accountability in a government that’s tied to the laws that we pass through the democratic process, not the back door shadow government of regulation that we now have affecting the crypto sector, and countless others, impeding innovation in the United States,” he concluded. 

While crypto has entered the conversation in a big way, compared to the 2016 and 2020 elections, we can’t rest on the laurels of crypto-friendly presidential candidates. One speaker said we need to be honest about whether they are electable and focus on influencing the ones with the most potential to win. The Stand with Crypto crew, who were there at the summit, continue to elevate the voices of everyday people involved in the space and help voters see where political figures in the different layers of government stand with crypto. 

Fighting for regulatory clarity and overblown headlines 

In the past month, the Wall Street Journal, along with other mainstream media, published a slew of stories about Hamas using crypto to raise millions to fund its operation. The FTX saga put a stain on the entire blockchain industry, even with SBF now behind bars. The same damage is happening with the Hamas reporting, with numbers that have been conflated, said Gurvais Grigg, Global Public Sector CTO of Chainalysis and former FBI Special Agent.

“Terrorist organizations primarily depend on traditional Fiat forms of financing, but they are turning to crypto as another form of moving money – because it’s a high-speed, low-cost, secure way to move money transborder,” Grigg said. 

You can’t have trillions of dollars move into a new asset class and not attract criminals, he added. But the transparency of the blockchain and its permanence makes it a poor vehicle for criminal use. Blockchain analysis can actually help solve investigations. “Cryptocurrency is not anonymous. It’s traceable. At best, it’s pseudo-anonymous,” he said. 

Grigg said if he were still an FBI agent, he’d much rather have the target of his investigation use digital assets than any other form of value transfer. Traditional financial institutions merge, and records get lost or damaged, but the blockchain offers an indelible record of transfers. This is especially helpful when conducting historical investigations, especially if it’s multi-jurisdictional. 

Grigg was joined on-stage with Nic Carter, who popularized Operation Choke Point 2.0 and has been outspoken about accusations regarding Hamas and crypto. Grigg said the $130 million estimate of funds raised by Hamas through crypto was “grossly inflated due to the way the analysis was done.” 

According to Griggs, the analysis was inaccurate because they conflated all the transactions of that broker service with terrorist financing. In other words, these illicit entities may be using brokers to engage in currency exchange, but that doesn’t mean every dollar flowing through these intermediaries is illicit. 

In Chainalysis’ Crypto Crime Report, they estimated over $20 billion identified in illicit activity across multiple categories, including terrorist financing. “When you think of that as a percentage of the overall amount of crypto moved, it’s a very small percentage. Some estimates have it down below 1 percent, as close to .15 percent. The true number, we don’t really know because not all crimes get recorded. But the relative percentage is significantly smaller than virtually any other asset transfer class,” said Griggs. 

He believes the transparency of the blockchain needs to be recognized more significantly, because it shows how responsible the industry can be to ferret out illicit actors and push them to the borders of the blockchain industry. 

“You’re the modern-day people” 

The summit closed high on the energy of crypto being a catalyst in reshaping society with personal freedom unrealized until now. “We need to get back to plain English. We’re not hoodie-wearing, super coders,” said a woman from the U.S. Blockchain Coalition. 

While some countries are making great strides to establish digital assets frameworks, such as Europe’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), web3 leaders need more than legislation. There’s also the access to talent, investment, capital markets, and infrastructure – and in the United States, a spirit of freedom and individual liberty that mirrors web3. From mining in Texas to banking in Wyoming, each state has its own makeup and mark on web3. 

After two packed days at the summit, I found a quiet corner for respite. U.S. Senator for Wyoming, Cynthia Lummis, and VP of Global Regulatory Policy at Coinbase, Scott Bauguess, walked by, engaged in conversation. It was a scene that perfectly symbolized the summit. The coming together of two worlds, policymakers and industry, to move the space forward.