U.S. Should Do the ‘Exact Opposite’ of China — Katie Haun Says

With China’s recent ban on cryptocurrencies, the crypto industry watches closely as to what’s going to happen next. Tech venture capitalists like Katie Haun expressed their sentiment on this matter. She says the U.S. should look at China to see what it should not do.

This is an opportunity for the United States because we should be doing the exact opposite in my mind in this realm of what China is doing.

Katie Haun is a former federal prosecutor; currently, she is now Andreessen Horowitz’s General Partner. More so, she expressed these sentiments from last Wednesday’s interview at CNBC’s Delivering Alpha Conference.

To clarify, China has already disclosed its digital yuan test for its citizens. This gave experts a glimpse of how the Chinese Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) will perform in the upcoming months. With this, Haun predicted that China will soon “tie trade, tie loans, and tie other assistance to the use of essentially their stablecoin.”

However, the public knows that no one and nothing can control Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.  Experts believe that its decentralized nature makes it trustworthy. Moreover, Haun clarified that “It’s not that the industry does not want regulation. It wants clarity, but it also does not want to be treated as a monolith.”  Further adding that believing that crypto enthusiasts are all against regulations, is completely a myth.

Along with this, she took NFTs as an example. As a former prosecutor, she believes that NFTs should not be regulated as a financial product and service. According to Haun, regulation cannot be one size fits all.

To add on, in the interview, Haun also pointed out her disappointment regarding how the U.S. SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) treated Coinbase and other exchanges. Here, Haun emphasized that there are those in the industry who are skirting laws and regulations freely while others are getting reprimanded despite having good faith efforts.