Coindesk | Wolfie Zhao | May 14, 2018

The question of whether self-regulation will help solve some of the cryptocurrency industry's problems was on full display Monday during CoinDesk's Consensus 2018 conference.

Part of the problem, according to panelist Gary DeWaal, a legal expert who focuses on financial services, is that existing rules as they relate to the tech are "an absolute mess." And this situation, he contended, isn't going away anytime soon.

DeWaal remarked:

"The CFTC budget has got cut this year. Even if it wants to regulate cryptocurrencies, it may not have enough resources from Congress to do so."

"The last thing we want to see is regulators take different views," Quintenz said.

In this context, DeWaal said that self-regulatory organizations (SROs) can play a role in helping regulators test the waters ahead of clearer regulatory frameworks.

"One critical role of SROs ... is in elevating the reputation of regulation, as it will set a standard that will hopefully be adopted by regulators in the future," he said.

Echoing that point, Yuzo Kano, the chief executive officer of the Japanese exchange bitFlyer, said that efforts taken by Japanese cryptocurrency SROs had ultimately paved the way to the formal roll-out of a financial registration law launched by the country's Financial Services Agency (FSA) in 2017.

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"We initiated an SRO back in 2014 ... to impose the know-your-customer (KYC) rule for exchanges. Some operators did want to take part, but some didn't. What we did was to convince these operators to include KYC all together to protect the market," Kano said.

Indeed, following a notable hack in January that saw some $530 million-worth of NEM tokens from the Japanese exchange Coincheck, crypto trading platforms in the country have again formed an SRO that works closely with the FSA to help bring about the secure and stable growth of the market.

On the other hand, regulators in other countries are moving more quickly in developing their cryptocurrency and blockchain rules.

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