Russell Starr | Source | CEO at DeFi Technologies

Whenever you have revolutions like blockchain that rock the very foundation of the status quo, you typically start without any regulations at all and then morph into standard regulation. Take the advent of internet technologies or biotech, for example, these technologies started out without regulations but later followed the traditional path of regulatory markets. Blockchain, on the other hand, is directed specifically towards destabilisng the status quo and traditional markets. Roughly 1% of the world has adopted or has exposure to crypto. If we are able to get to a world where people are comfortable with investing in blockchain and crypto — a world where everyone is able to realise its benefits, not just that 1 per cent — we need the global market to invest in them. And in order for Wall Street and Bay Street to gain a foothold to truly leverage the technology, the regulatory environment would need to catch up. Right now there is virtually no regulation with very little limits on innovations in the field. However, you can expect the next decade will be very volatile for crypto. That means that there will have to be changes for that other 99 per cent (beyond that 1 per cent of the global population) to get comfortable with using and investing in crypto. One of those changes is the use of an exchange-traded fund (ETF), which would allow investors to buy and sell the assets outside of cryptocurrency exchanges. The use of these crypto ETFs will help show the world that it is possible to invest in these decentralized finance products, and still do so in a regulatory and compliant way.