JW Verret is a Harvard-educated attorney who teaches corporate finance and accounting at George Mason University. In recent years, his work has increasingly intersected with the cryptocurrency space, as has his legion of Twitter followers, who refer to him as “Professor Bullock,” or blockchain professors – are all deeply aware of this.
In addition to his work at GMU, Verret is also known as an advocate for cryptocurrencies, serving as the top director of the Cryptocurrency Freedom Lab, a group dedicated to protecting “the freedom and privacy of cryptocurrency developers and users.” think tank. He also served as an expert legal witness for defendants accused of evading financial tracking laws (erroneously, Verrett believed). During this time, he found time to serve as a regular columnist for Cointelegraph.
1) You have a very busy career—teaching at George Mason University, serving on SEC committees, and attending trials as an expert witness. How did life lead you to cryptocurrency?
I spent 15 years writing about it and thinking about it as a libertarian regulatory/finance guy in Washington, DC. In the first 10 years, I lost everything I fought for during the Dodd-Frank era.
The characteristic of cryptocurrency is that it is a liberating revolution in finance. It solves or is designed to solve a financial problem that government regulation is only designed to solve. Regulation solidifies the role of intermediaries, and cryptocurrencies solve the problem by eliminating the need for these intermediaries. This is very interesting to me.
2) You have served on the SEC Investor Advisory Committee. You’ve also been a very vocal critic of Chairman Gary Gensler. How was that experience?
It was a good experience. I succeeded Hester Pierce when she became SEC Commissioner. I wrote a lot of dissents as a committee member, so I hope I made Hester proud, but I don’t think they will invite me back in the future under the current chair. It seems like he’s been trying to destroy the industry. He could have reached out to the industry to try to make things work, but he wasn’t interested, and he sued some of the best players in cryptocurrency — Coinbase and Kraken — while ignoring the worst.
3) You are a strong supporter of ZCash. Explain your interests there.
Zcash is like Bitcoin, but private. This is a great invention. Whoever the developer is, deserves a Nobel Prize.
I own a lot of Bitcoin. I think this is a huge innovation. But for everyday payments, I think we need some privacy, and it’s hard to do that with Bitcoin. I am also a fan of Monero. There are some really good privacy technologies out there. But they’re both pretty good projects – it’s possible to like the Rolling Stones and the Beatles at the same time.
Also Read: Supreme Court Could Stop SEC’s War on Cryptocurrency
No other privacy coin is in the same range. There are some really neat innovations, but they’re not yet at the level you need to have the same privacy. Of course, there are some interesting ones. Other projects that I’m very excited about are Samourai Wallet and Sparrow Wallet, which provide some privacy for Bitcoin transactions.
4) For that matter, how do you think the future of cryptocurrency will be defined? Will it be defined as a way to achieve greater privacy in transactions? Will it be defined in terms of efficiency because it is easier to use than traditional financial instruments? Will it be defined by crime? Or will it be a mixture of these?
This is an interesting question. I think it’s going to be a combination of all of those things. Crime is often a proving ground for new technologies. This is of course for the internet. In the 1990s, many criminals took advantage of the Internet. I think the most powerful force that will determine the survival of cryptocurrencies will be some mix of efficiency and scale, but I think privacy will be part of it. As governments and big businesses fight back against trustless, unintermediated transfers of property, the only way to protect themselves is with privacy coins and privacy protocols.
5) You also served as an expert witness in United States v. Stringoff, The US government is charging Roman Sterlingov, 33, to develop Bitcoin Fog, a cryptocurrency mixer. Tell me about it.
I spend a lot of time as a forensic accountant, but I’m also very private. Some see this as a conflict: How can you protect privacy and chase money at the same time? But I don’t see it as a conflict at all. Some of the most private people I know are forensic investigators. I am a believer in public information. People should know how to maintain privacy. Regardless, the worst people are often not smart—they make mistakes, and they don’t use privacy tools optimally.
Also Read: CipherTrace Expert Says Chainaanalysis Data Leads to ‘False Arrest’ of So-Called Bitcoin Fog Founder
In the case of United States v.Stringoff, I provide some expert assistance in forensic accounting and money laundering. It was helpful to combine my legal and accounting perspectives to help the legal team. I also did some work helping clients of large cryptocurrency exchanges when their cryptocurrencies were frozen, and we eventually fixed the issue when we found that the client had done nothing wrong but was incorrectly tracked by crypto tracking tools. Marked.
There can be real costs to false positives in encrypted tracking, which is one thing that worries me about the dominance of certain tracking companies. TRM and Ciphertrace seem to be trying to get things right — and not exaggerating about their tracking capabilities — but that’s not the case for every company in the industry.
6) I hear you have an opinion about UFOs. Can you tell us what you know?
I really enjoyed the podcast about the history of UFO investigations.some good ones are strange arrival and High monster.I also recommend reading J. Allen Hynek’s Hynek UFO Report, This is about the project blue book report. He was a physics professor at a small school, and one day the Air Force asked him to study this problem. I think they thought he was going to be a frontman – which he was, but then he changed.
The government knows no more now than it did 50 years ago. They probably know more than they’re sharing, but I don’t think they understand. The Navy pilot’s revelations were shocking. So I think they do exist. I think they might be some kind of unmanned probe – no apocalypse or conspiracy. I just think they wanted to see what we were doing.
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