Because Crypto Is Always Awake

of solutions in search of a problem. Our job is, Bloomberg editors, is to assess all of these perspectives, all of these headlines, all of these disagreements, and determine how and whether they become stories. Welcome to another edition of Friday in the Editor's Room, a conversation with Bloomberg's crypto editors from around the world. It's a win know into how we see crypto shaping markets and our culture. Joining me today Crypto senior editors Anna Irrera, who's based in London.

I think maybe what we'll would shock me would be if Michael Sailor seals is the big points out that would be a shock. And Philip Lagerkranza, who's based in Zurich. One thing that really interests me right now is what the response from Singapore is going to be. Anna, phil thank you for joining us, Thank you for having us. I know we are all supposed to be doing all sorts of other works, so I appreciate you taking the time to me in the studio today. And I want

to start with you. You are our senior editor based in London. You have been in Bloomberg five minutes, yes, three weeks and five seconds, the almost fourth I think this is the fourth week. What is time? What are some of the big things you've seen in terms of coverage out of the UK since you joined, Because I believe the UK government fellow parts in like your first or second week here. It was the first week someone who was in training with me or was arrived the

same day, was covering is covering the government. So I felt kind of privileged because at least I was in him because we were doing training at the same time, and he was like, sorry, I can't show up, and it felt like he had a good excuse. Um. So I also joined in crypto markets were not very calm. So I was worried because obviously I was not only somewhere else, but I was on Madley for a while that I would arrive and there would either be no market left or there would be so many things that

I would need to catch up on. But obviously everything happened at once, and so I had to catch up in two days. And I feel like with crypto, because it's such a global story, you can sort of say, what's happening here, but it's the same that's happening in New York to ur in Singapore, it's the firms maybe based there, or in the Cayman Islands or in the Bahamas most likely, But you sort of don't really feel

like there's a local story as much. So you know, we've we've we've had to catch up on what was going with Celsius in three a c. There's been facets of the story, the bigger stories everywhere, right, But obviously with with the UK, the big thing now is like what's going on with the government and what does that mean for crypto because the previous cabinet um was very much into regulating it or given but not in a

negative way. Necessarily, but regulating and giving it a framework, um so that the sort of businesses can know what they can or cat too, and hopefully that would attract more crypto companies to the UK. This was the idea of having the UK be like the crypto technology capital of the world. Yes, famously was the States, and before that it was being the fintech capital of the world. So there's always the sort of flavor of the of

the two years or yeah, yeah, nothing like Empire. So when the government collapsed, like, what in functional terms has that meant for crypto Like is it that the people who were in charge of creating that framework or that environments are no longer there? Is it that their staffs

can't make any decision? Like what's the practical consequence of not having a prime I think obviously when there's a change of government and me being Italian, no, no, this very well because we never have a government that lasts more than five minutes. It means like you kind of have to start from scratch when you're in someone in industry in creating those relationships. So you know, people that take over need to kind of catch up on what's

going on. If it's not something they've been familiar with. And you know, crypto is a big deal for us, but it probably isn't for the world at large at this point, still in for for government, so maybe the people just that are there in the Treasury need to catch up with what what's happening. But also you sort of need to figure out whether they do care and whether they have other priorities. And in particular, the previous

government had someone at the head of the Treasury. She soon a who's now running to be potentially the next Prime minister, who was very active in this, and his sort of second hand man, John Glenn, also was very active in the crypto industry and they had all of these plans to attract more firms here. So we're waiting

to see who will take over after Boris Johnson. It could be so neck and so then what does that mean for cryptop Maybe it's a good thing or maybe not, because he's now going to be focused on some something else. Um so in bigger problems of the UK exactly, yes, got it. And you know, Phil, you're in Switzerland, which I remember I was telling you, I'm not even sure

who runs Switzerland. It seems so calm all the time, but you you know, you're kind of coming at this from what's happening in Europe, and also because of the time zone that you and Honor in you do have a lot more overlap with the a PACK time zone. To pick up on something that Anna said around you know, there are many elements of this that are a global story and there are a couple of elements that are a local story. What are some of the things that

you're seeing kind of more locally right now? If you start with a PACK, which is you know, an area that that I'm also still very much Asia Pacific for the Asian indeed, apologies, yes you start with Asia Pacific, I think that you're seeing on most the tail end of the crypto contagion playing out there. It's quite interesting, you know, it started we had Celsius, I believe at the very start. Three a C obviously was was probably the early mover. And yes they are a sort of

an Asian outfit. But it's come back now to companies. Many of them are based in the Singapore Vould for instance, and also the Thai company zip Mix. One thing that really interests me right now is the what the response from Singapore is going to be we had three a C that Capital, three Hours Capital that at least was registered there, and Vold which is based there. Terraform Labs UM is based in Singapore. They have come out to say already that look, we are going to be adding

regulation UM to protect consumers. They've already got like a marketing band from January on crypto UM and and so to to to the extent that Singapore will really come down hard on this sector now UM, I think that is going to be a very interesting development. I think the indications from the Central Bank there is that if retail protectors, investors, apologies can't protect themselves, then the central

Bank is going to do it for them. So the based on the people that you know, we have been speaking to an industry, the overriding concern here is that Singapore will take a turn in in the more more sort of closed off or strict on direction when it comes to regulations. And it's interesting, right because we're talking about jurisdictions that want to attract crypto, right, so how

do you balance it out. Singapore was very much I remember in my golden age with fintech reporting was very much trying to attract fintech firms and position themselves as it is a great home for fintech because the theory is that then your financial sector remains competitive, right, so you can't attract them too much, or if you do attract them, you have to have safeguards in place. So it's interesting to see if they'll swing the other way.

As Phil was saying, so, and I'm hearing from you that, you know, the potential for crypto regulation in the UK, which is something we've talked a lot about on the podcast, including with our colleague Emily Nicole, has been more of a shall we say positive framework in the sense of they're figuring out how to make crypto work and you know,

set up set it up that way. Feel what I'm hearing from you that Singapore is less than impressed with some of the things that have gone down recently, either by companies that were registered in Singapore, domiciled in Singapore, or otherwise had like Singaporean exposure and customers and clients. And then here in the US, it's also been a pretty interesting week in terms of what regulators are appearing

to take action on. So one of the big headlines of the past several days has been around coin base, whether that's in the terms of their decline and their share price earlier this week, whether that's in terms of Cathy Wood, who is you know, kind of a famous stock pick up, finally starting to shed holdings of coin based stock from her a r K E t F.

But why is that happening. It's happening because the U S. Securities and Exchange Commission here is now taking a pretty interesting approach to appearing to regulate the crypto industry through enforcement. And I think that's a little bit different from what I'm hearing from you, I know, where it's not so much we're shutting you down story. It's a we're going to figure out how to make this work. And Phil Singapore is like, we'll see if there's an enforcement action.

But in the US, people are getting arrested, and I think that took a lot of people by surprise. It certainly didn't didn't help the bitcoin price when the SEC, working with various other enforcement partners, issued an action against a four coin based employee for an allegation of insider trading. Now, going after insider trading is absolutely what the SEC does.

Going after insider trading in crypto tokens freaked people out because what that suggested is the SEC was starting to define at least a limited number of those tokens as securities for the purposes of enforcement. And pretty much like every good crypto lawyer, this week has been like, you know, writing statements calling clients, being called by clients that the chief legal officer at coin base, you know, spun up a blog post in record timing like this is why, um,

we don't think that these things are securities. We don't list on registered securities on our plota where coin based trades a lot more than Bitcoin. They can fact more than a hundred and fifty different tokens are traded, and they're asking the SEC for clarity around the rules, even as they make clear that they don't think they did anything wrong here. If they were found to have traded security use, then the company may well have to file

register with the SEC as in exchange. So around the world, the regulation story does seem to be the one that is going to continue to dominate our coverage, at least

for a minute. Yeah, I think I think what's really interesting about the us IS and the SEC is that they've been warning that some of these things or securities for a very long time, at least since the last crash, right, so, I think people had lost hope that they would actually come in and enforce in a way that was significant around this, and they were sort of asking the industry was asking sec please give us a list of what is a token or what is it that way we

know for sure, and they didn't, and so now they're

starting to come in. The question I have is which is which is You know, coin base was allowed to list and a lot of these assets were on their platform, so some people were maybe expecting that that was sort of a okay, then everything is fine with coin base, because it's not a public company, and so it means that the things it listed had received a sort of task it approval or there wasn't anything you know there that was was a security but didn't have the proper registration.

So it's quite surprising that they did come in, and I wonder whether they will go after more firms or if you know, it will take a lot of money to fight coin bas because coin bases, i mean, their share price has fallen, but they do have a lot of resources, and so it's interesting that they decided to pick a fight with with coin based um if you can call it picking a fight, but you know it will it will definitely be a sort of court battle

to watch, right. Yeah. I think that's one of the things that we're certainly gearing up for, is that a lot of this is going into courts. It's very similar to what we've also talked about on the podcast with Gray Scale being really clear that they are going to take the sec to court because they disagree with the regulator's decision to continue to not allow them to convert their you know, bitcoin trust, one of the biggest in the world, into an exchange traded fund. Certainly fun times

for regulation reporters at Bloomberg and every else. We'll be right back with some more of the crypto trends that we're watching as we head into the coming week. You'll be hearing from Anna and Phil, two of our senior editors for Bloomberg Crypto. Just as a kind of a closing question or closing thought. I always get asked, what

do you think is going to happen next? And my default answer is I genuinely have new idea because I feel like every week, every day we wake up and there's like well, here's a headline that we weren't necessarily expecting to see. So I'll ask you a slightly different question. Phil will start with you, is there anything that didn't surprise you this week where you're like, yeah, totally saw

that coming. No. Look, I think the South Korean investigation into Terraform Labs and it's co founder Do Kwan and its other co founder now Danlian Shin as well, they had telegraphed that, you know, something was coming on that, and we saw them rating various ex changes and home this week to collect evidence. I guess you could call it UM. I think that was telegraphed. I I was surprised that the width and the scope of what they did. Other than that, I think there was a rough expectation

that the contagion wasn't quite over. And so when when zip Mix came out and said that, you know, they had frozen withdrawals, the name to me was surprising. It wasn't aware the name that I was keenly aware of, but that there were entities out there that were nursing heavy losses from the contagion UM wasn't a huge surprise to me. But other than that, pretty much everything is always a surprise, makes it fun. What about you, Anna, I'm a little more jaded. I'm like the grandmother of

some crypto reporting at this point. I feel I'm not ever like, oh, shocked, but it's like, wow, this is evolving like we might have expected had we followed a bit more attention. People are paid more attention. I think maybe what we would shock me would be if Michael Sailor cells the big coins out. That would be a shock at this point. But to be honest that the the the sec fight as I will continue to call it with with coin based sort of was surprising because

it is a big step. And I just said, like arresting people. You know, I remember with the with the I c O boom, people are like, people are going to get arrested, and like, you know, it's not going to go well, You're you're issuing on registered securities in a very bombastic fashion, raising hundreds of millions of dollars with retail investors and then literally no one really of

any significance did go to jail for that. So you know, it is always quite shocking when when when they take that sort of step from the digital world into the real world, of you know, handcuffs. Well, to your point, there's a big there's a big gap between these initial arrests and these allegations and anything that will actually happen in courts, right, like we don't know what's going to

happen to the sex coin based employee. The headlining, the immediate headlining stuff is always like the thing has happened, and then there's months and years of people in courts and paperwork filed and yeah, we're still RP sorry for ripple exactly. Yeah. So you know, well, the good news is we will be here to cover it and we will all carry on talking about it in the future. But thank you both for joining me here today and you know you'll be back on the pod maybe next week.

Thank you. Thank you. You heard from senior editor Anna Arera and senior editor of Philip Lagerkranza. You can find all of our work in the Bloomberg terminal on Bloomberg dot com and we're all on Twitter. Anna is that at Anna Arera, that's I R R E R A. And Phil is at Lagerkranza Elite member of the Last Name Club. On the next episode of Bloomberg Cryptoe Alone, cops in the US and UK sees billions of dollars

of crypto assets from various different criminal busts. With so much money on the line and stakes only getting higher, enforcement agencies around the world have had to learn quickly how to spot these digital assets and take them out of the hands of finals. Bloomberg reports, Ellen Milligan and David Variakos will join me to discuss how the seizures of digital assets are transforming policing, both in terms of policy and protocol around the world. This is Bloomberg Crypto,

a daily podcast from Bloomberg and I Heart Radio. For more shows from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Send us your comments, questions, or suggestions for the show to Crypto at Bloomberg dot net or find us on Twitter. We're at Crypto. The supervising producer of Bloomberg Crypto is Vicky very Galina. Our senior producer is Janet Babin. Our producer is Sharon Barriro. Our producer is Mohammed Farup. Our

associate producers are Zena Sudiki and Thaie Butler. Desta wonder At is our engineer original music by Leo Sidrin. I'm Stacy, Marie Ishmael. Have a great weekend. M