This week in Washington, D.C., Chainlink hosted an invite-only event with U.S. government representatives to discuss American blockchain policy and financial system innovation. Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov sat down with U.S. Representative Bryan Steil, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Digital Assets, Financial Technology, and Artificial Intelligence, who shared his views on how the U.S. could become a leader in global web3 adoption.
“I think we have a huge opportunity, as the political landscape has changed, to really move forward and embrace blockchain technology, web3, and crypto through legislation,” said Steil. “As we look to web3, what we should want as policymakers is for this development to occur here.”
Nazarov described the current view of U.S. blockchain adoption as a mostly united front.
“It’s a largely bipartisan issue that people can agree on, because it’s net beneficial to everybody,” he said.
“I think what you’ll see is a growing bipartisan support inside this space, because in many ways it’s nonpartisan in nature,” Steil agreed. “There’s broad bipartisan interest in the space and I actually think you’re going to see that continue to grow.”
Steil’s current focus is creating a regulatory framework that protects consumers while encouraging companies to innovate onshore.
In the aftermath of FTX, Nazarov believes leaning into the superior transparency and security of blockchain technology, such as Chainlink Proof of Reserve (PoR), will ultimately create a better, safer, more efficient financial system.
“I think that people have not fully understood the clarity that blockchains can create in a way that allows you to actually avoid those situations,” he said.
“Committing certain forms of fraud would be harder in the web3 world than it would be in the traditional system. That’s the end state I feel we all want to arrive at, where we end up not with just a transition from one financial system to another, but the transition to an improved version of the financial system.”
While Steil believes the private sector should determine the best use cases, he pointed to “an array of use cases that are incredibly fascinating” from cross-border transactions using stablecoins, to improving the cost and efficiency of buying and selling real estate onchain.
“I just look at that or other areas where there’s heavy transaction costs and say there’s going to be and should be significant investment in this space, and someone in the private sector is going to find the solution,” he said.
“At the end of the day, the American consumer is going to win as transaction costs have an opportunity to come down dramatically, and that’s from finance to real estate.”
Watch the full conversation.