Billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, chief executive officer of global cryptocurrency exchange FTX, said the delays in setting a global regulatory landscape for digital assets is not due to opposition to such rules, but more a lack of action to put them in place.
One jurisdiction needs to take the lead to set a global policy standard and this will spur initiatives elsewhere as there is high global interest in crypto, he said in a virtual keynote speech at South Korea’s Blockchain Week in Busan (BWB2022) on Thursday.
Binance exchange founder Changpeng Zhao and Justin Sun, the founder of the Tron blockchain, will also speak at the Oct.27-29 event in the country’s second-largest city.
“[What is] missing the most is for major countries and jurisdictions in this ecosystem to really take the lead and build out a digital asset policy, a regulatory framework shared with the rest of the world,” said Bankman-Fried.
See related article: FTX agrees to help South Korea’s Busan build its own crypto exchange
While making the call for more action, he did acknowledge that regulatory developments around the world have made progress, mentioning that cryptocurrency bills drafted by the U.S. Congress have a real chance of passing.
He added that there is growing consensus among different policymakers of the need for regulatory oversight of the crypto industry.
South Korea designated Busan as a “blockchain regulation-free zone” in 2019, which allows developers to bring forward projects and ideas that might be restricted elsewhere in Korea due to regulations.
In August this year, FTX partnered with Busan to help build the country’s first city-backed crypto exchange and develop the local blockchain ecosystem to boost Busan’s status as a digital hub of Asia.
The FTX CEO said Busan and South Korea are jurisdictions that are taking the initiative to work with the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry, especially with Busan’s so-called regulatory sandbox on crypto.
“We’re extremely excited about what we see going on in Busan, and more generally in Korea,” Bankman-Fried said. “[We’re] really excited about the prospects for the rollout of a regulatory sandbox in the area of a major global hub of digital assets,”
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