00:00Thank you. Senator Toberville.
00:03Senator Toberville. Thank you.
00:05Mr. Kim, you touched on this very briefly in your opening statement.
00:10The EU and UK are moving quickly to attract, you know, blockchain-based innovation.
00:16What risks are we at in the United States?
00:20What are we going to face if we don't get more urgent about what's going on?
00:24I recently talked to some exchanges, and they're freaking out, basically,
00:28about, hey, we've got to do something, or we're going to have to move out of the country.
00:31What's your thoughts?
00:33Thank you very much for your question, Senator.
00:35As I mentioned in my testimony, it is a global race to the top.
00:38So other jurisdictions have not been waiting for the U.S. to lead.
00:41You have the EU, Singapore, Japan, UK, all looking to attract technology resources.
00:46I see blocked chain development and digital assets as the plumbing and infrastructure for the second half of the 21st century.
00:52We need the U.S. to lead.
00:54That said, despite the progress in other jurisdictions, everyone is watching the U.S. now.
00:59They're seeing the Senate having passed Genius.
01:01They're seeing development of market structure bill, including in this committee.
01:04And even the UK is actually a really good example, Senator, where they had been taking a very modular, patient approach.
01:09But recently, they announced an all-at-once approach.
01:11And I believe that there's an opportunity for the U.S. to cement its leadership and make sure this innovation stays here in the U.S.
01:17And that starts with a comprehensive legislative framework, as I discussed, Senator.
01:21Mr. Secretary, you want to follow up on that?
01:22You got anything on that about us dragging our feet?
01:27Senator, I encourage this committee and the House to continue to work on legislation in this area.
01:40I think it's very important.
01:41I can tell you that from our perspective, we have, as I indicated, member firms already engaged in this activity.
01:51And to the extent that the CFTC would be provided with not only anti-fraud, but also regulatory oversight over digital commodities,
01:59I think it would be very helpful as far as our own regulatory structure here.
02:05Thank you, Mr. Minham.
02:07The U.S. model of having two regulators, and we touched on this briefly, only works if they are clear jurisdiction.
02:16You're very familiar with that.
02:19Can you talk about the need to clear up, you know, this regulatory definition between the CFTC and the SEC?
02:26Senator, thanks for the question.
02:28It's the first and most important step, because from that point, the two agencies will be able to really start to develop
02:34rules, either distinctly and uniquely or in a joint fashion.
02:39But this is certainly a new asset that has a lot of characteristics that are similar to other assets,
02:45but also have a lot of characteristics that are novel and new and are going to require different way of thinking about.
02:51So I do think it's critically important.
02:53I also think, putting myself in my old shoes, it is important that the agencies get a bit of a steer from this committee in Congress,
03:01because there are lines that I think this committee and the Congress can draw to help the agencies start to really define the landscape of what tokens are securities and what tokens are commodities.
03:13Thank you. I yield back.
