6 Questions for JW Verret — the blockchain professor who’s tracking the money

J.W. Verret is a Harvard-educated attorney who teaches corporate finance and accounting at George Mason University. His work has actually increasingly intersected with the cryptocurrency sector in recent years, as his legion of Twitter followers– who know him as “BlockProf,” or the Blockchain Professor– are poignantly mindful.

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Aside from his work at GMU, Verret has become called a singing advocate for crypto as the leading honcho at Crypto Freedom Lab, a think tank battling devoted to protecting “liberty and personal privacy for crypto developers and users.” He also functions as an expert legal witness for offenders implicated– wrongfully, Verret would argue– of evading financial-tracking laws, and is authoring a book, tentatively titled “Blockchain Privacy and Forensics.” In between, he finds time to function as a regular columnist for Cointelegraph.

1) Youre extremely busy professionally– teaching at George Mason University, serving on committees with the Securities and Exchange Commission, going to trials as expert witness. How did life lead you to cryptocurrency?

The thing with crypto is that its been a freedom transformation in financing. It fixes, or aims to repair, problems in finance that federal government policy just intends to repair. Regulation entrenches intermediaries where crypto repairs issues by getting rid of the need for those intermediaries. Which was really interesting to me..

I invested 15 years as a libertarian regulation/financial individual, writing it, think-tanking it in Washington, D.C. For the very first 10 years, I lost everything I combated for in the Dodd-Frank era.

2) You served on the SECs Investor Advisory Committee, but youve also been extremely singing in criticizing SEC Chairman Gary Gensler. How was that experience?

He couldve connected to the industry to try to make things work, but he has no interest in that, and hes sued a few of the very best actors in crypto– Coinbase and Kraken– while overlooking the worst.

I changed Hester Peirce when she became an SEC commissioner. I composed a lot of dissents as a committee member, so I hope I did Hester proud, however I do not think theyll welcome me back in the future under the existing chairman.

3) Youre a vocal supporter of ZCash. Explain your interest there.

There are no other privacy tokens that are in the same ballpark. There are some that are truly cool innovations, however theyre not at the level you need to have the very same personal privacy. Other projects Im really delighted about are Samourai Wallet and Sparrow Wallet, which offer a bit of privacy for BItcoin transactions.

Likewise check out: The Supreme Court might stop the SECs war on crypto.

I own a great deal of Bitcoin. I believe its a significant development. For everyday payments, I think we require some privacy, and its hard to get that with Bitcoin. Im likewise a fan of Monero. which has some respectable privacy technology. But theyre both pretty excellent projects– ts possible to like both the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.

Zcash is like Bitcoin, however private. It a great innovation. Whoever the designers were deserve a Nobel Prize.

4) On that note, how do you believe the future of crypto is going to be defined? Is it going to be defined as a method to achieve greater privacy in transaction? Will it be specified by effectiveness in the sense that its simpler to utilize than standard financing instruments? Will it be defined by criminal activity? Or will it be some mixture of these?

I believe it will be some combination of all those things. I think the strongest forces in identifying what cryptos survive will be some mix of efficiency and scale, but I think personal privacy will be a part of it. As governments and big corporations fight back versus trustless, disintermediated home transfers, the only method to protect yourself will be through the use of privacy coins and privacy protocols.

5) Youre likewise acting as an expert witness in U.S. v. Sterlingov, where the U.S. government is charging 33-year-old Roman Sterlingov with developing Bitcoin Fog– a crypto mixer. The FBI apprehended him at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in 2021, and theyre accusing him [Bitcoin Fog] of laundering $336 million. Inform me about that.

I spend a lot of time as a forensic accounting professional, however Im likewise into personal privacy. Some individuals think thats a conflict: How can you be personal privacy while also following the cash? Some of the people most into privacy who I understand are forensic investigators.

False positives in crypto tracing can have a genuine cost and that is one thing that worries me about the dominance of a few of the tracing companies. TRM and Ciphertrace look like they attempt to get things right– and dont overclaim their tracing abilities– however thats not true of every firm in this industry.

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Also read: CipherTrace professional states Chainalysis information contributed to wrongful arrest of alleged Bitcoin Fog creator.

In regards to U.S. v. Sterlingov, Im offering some specialist assistance in forensic accounting and money laundering. Its been handy to merge my legal and accounting perspectives to assist the legal team. I also do some work assisting consumers of large crypto exchanges when their crypto is frozen, and we eventually solve it when we figure out that the client not did anything wrong– but were falsely flagged by crypto tracing tools.

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6) I hear you have viewpoints about UFOs. Can you tell us what you understand?

Some people believe thats a conflict: How can you be personal privacy while likewise following the cash? I believe they believed he d be a front male– and he was, however then he changed.

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Im really into podcasts about the history of examinations into UFOs. I d also advise reading J. Allen Hyneks “The Hynek UFO Report,” which is about the Project BLUE BOOK Report. I believe they thought he d be a front male– and he was, however then he changed.

They might understand more than theyve shared, however I dont believe they understand it. I think theyre probably probes of some kind that are unmanned– nothing armageddon or conspiracy. I simply believe they want to see what were up to.

Rudy Takala.
Rudy Takala is the opinion editor at Cointelegraph. He previously worked as an editor or press reporter in newsrooms that include Fox News, The Hill and the Washington Examiner. He holds a masters degree in political communication from American University in Washington, DC.

For everyday payments, I believe we require some personal privacy, and its difficult to get that with Bitcoin. I believe the strongest forces in identifying what cryptos make it through will be some mix of efficiency and scale, but I believe privacy will be a part of it. As governments and big corporations combat back versus trustless, disintermediated residential or commercial property transfers, the only method to safeguard yourself will be through the use of privacy coins and personal privacy procedures.