United States’ SEC is strategic, but painfully slow: Messari’s Selkis

On the latest episode of the ‘On The Brink with Castle Island’ podcast, Ryan Selkis, Founder and CEO of Messari, spoke about his views on crypto-asset networks and his expectations for 2020. During the podcast, Selkis addressed how staking services have abstracted away the economics and underpinnings of DeFi, stating that the yield on staking is essentially a very tax-inefficient stock dividend.

“What it does show,” Selkis said, “is that the economically motivated actors, the investor-oriented actors in these ecosystems, are going to aggregate or find a way to kind of leverage other people’s money to make a rational investment decision, even if the killer app and the end-users are not paying attention.”

Selkis also spoke about the United States’ Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), claiming that they seem to be much more strategic than most people give them credit for. However, Selkis conceded that “it’s just so painfully slow compared to the pace of the industry’s evolution.”

The Messari CEO also expanded on why he thinks there are going to be $1 billion worth of exchange acquisitions over the next two years. “They make the most money, but they also spend the most money,” he said, pointing out how a vast majority of the revenue in the space is going to exchanges. 

However, Selkis concluded by stating that if crypto is as transformative for finance as the Internet was for publishing, social media, and search, then that power is not necessarily going to the exchanges, but to predominant data providers that are powering and “serving as the trusted oracles powering some of these applications.”