Heath Tarbert, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman, is very positive about both blockchain and DeFi. He said that blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) could “potentially revolutionize finance” and that DeFi represents a possible theoretical alternative to the ‘too big to fail’ centralized banks. But that doesn’t mean he thinks the sector should escape regulation.
Talking at last week’s OECD Global Blockchain Policy Forum, Tarbert appealed to innovators to engage with regulators early.” If you have a regulated industry, the chances of having market integrity and trust are there, and therefore at the end of the day it will benefit you,” said Tarbert.
He was surprisingly bullish on DeFi. Here’s what he had to say: “I look at DeFi and I am fascinated by it. For all of us that experienced the Global Financial Crisis, particularly the issue of banks and other financial institutions that were ‘too big to fail’ and that continue to stand at the center of the financial system, I would say that DeFi represents an interesting theoretical possibility of an alternative to that. Of a system where it’s not necessarily concentrated in a few global players but, as the term notes, decentralized. I would say that’s really fascinating and interesting.”
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