"In my view, the legislative priority should center on crypto trading, lending, and DeFi platforms”
He is clearly demarcating between Bitcoin and the whole concept of DeFi platforms. IMO, DeFi working on non-custodial, smart-contract basis would still be in a different category than DeFi on PoS chains.
The former would probably just have to end up complying with the investor protection requirements that, whether we like it or not, people at SEC ire sworn to uphold. Its the PoS DeFi that seems trickier. This is because a PoS chain is really just a bunch of rich rent-seekers bringing infrastructure together to provide a service. They are not much different from your normal brick and mortar banks. This would mean that they'll have to comply with every requirement that banks do, or face legal action.
"For those who want to encourage innovations in crypto, I’d like to note that financial innovations throughout history don’t long thrive outside of our public policy frameworks.”
Again. Talking of Financial innovations, he did separate out Bitcoin as being Nakamoto's innovation. This "financial innovation" is really just about the history of "financial engineering" leading upto the collapse and then the framing of Dodd-Frank act (and countless acts earlier to keep up with wall street). He is clearly hinting towards SEC framing laws for DeFi platforms. I wonder what that will mean to the current governance of these platforms. When you have to comply with laws, and you don't, what does that mean in terms of liability for the stakeholders??
These are difficult questions that nobody in the DeFi universe wants to face. Guess we won't have to wait much longer to see what happens. I am guessing that we'll see a few example cases to be taken up by the SEC and then the industry will go from there. Surprisingly, much of this talk of regualtion seems to be leading to a bullrun right as we write, LOL. Gotta love crypto.