前CFTC主席：Binance 60亿美元被盗是银行劫案非技术故障

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You're listening to Bloomberg Business [music] Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenc on Bloomberg Radio. Bitcoin sank below $77,000 for the first time in more than a month. It's deepening the sell-off after Binance revealed a record hack that rattled the crypto industry and renewed questions about the security of customer assets, even at the world's largest digital asset exchange. We've got with us the perfect voice on this and so much more when it comes to the crypto industry.

Jay Christopher John Carlo, former chairman of the CFTC. He's also the author of the new book, The New Adventures of Crypto Dad. It's a sequel to his earlier book. This one is subtitled the quest for financial freedom in the 21st century. He joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio. Chris, welcome back to the program or should say former chairman. Welcome back.

It's great to be here Tim being with you.

You know, you became known as the crypto dad about a decade ago. You led the CFTC when the first US regulated Bitcoin futures uh launched. Seems like many in the industry may need a parental figure after this latest hack. This is the I mean, we're talking6 billion dollars here. What's going on? Is this is this growing pains or something bigger? Well, it's it's really interesting if you think about an analogy that I've been sharing with people as to what happened.

If you think about a bank, somebody distracted the teller and reached into the teller's uh uh drawer and stole cash out of it. They didn't get into the vault. They didn't get into the basement. They didn't blow up the safe and get the big money. What they really did was took the cash that's there to handle short-term redemptions and for 20 minutes they were able to pick out of the draw before people figured it out. So this is not truly fundamental to crypto.

It's not breaking the code. It's not what it really was was a bank heist and the banking system subject to bank heist all the time.

Uh but a bank heist of $6 billion.

But a bank heist of $6 billion. I mean,

so the I mean, the the traditional fiat currency financial system is not subject to $6 billion bank heist all the time,

right? And yet the crypto price today, Bitcoin is down, I don't know, four or five%, maybe even less, 3%.

Well, that that Yeah, I mean, not even that much.

Not even that much. You know, I remember when the when FTX blew up, the impact on the crypto markets was down 20 or 30%. So, it's it it I'm not to minimize this in any way. uh certainly there are vulnerabilities that need to be uh fixed and addressed and I think the whole industry is coming together to do that but it's not it's not a failure of the underlying blockchain technology it's it's a failure of of of a of a firm

so how do we go about with the regulation

right well and there and let's come to that but the other thing about this is this is a hack by a nation state this is a state sponsored hacking organization this is part of the Lazarus group the the traitor trader uh part of that group. And this is something I write about in my new book. It's time for the United States to get off defense and go onto offense. A proposal I put to the White House that was been partially responded to is that we dust off the constitutional provisions for private hearing to allow America's awesome tech technological capability to go back at them.

I mean, we could hack this back if we had the mind to do so. And it's time for us to stop playing defense and go on offense. Now, the White House has responded to that in part with an executive order in August that is authorizing government contractors under supervision by the Department of Justice to do that, but we haven't seen much evidence yet that that started. But the I think this indicates more than anything we are vulnerable to attack by agent agents of nation states and it's time for us to fight back.

I mean, the thing is about this one is this is a different one than we saw with like attacks on on wallets or cold storage. Uh it sort of seems like over the last few months it's been hack after vulnerability after hack after vulnerability.

Indeed.

Are we going to keep seeing that?

Um well, you know, it's funny. I I ran an agency, this Commodity Futures Trading Commission with law enforcement agency.

Yeah. And and you know, it has law enforcement capability. And the thing you see when you spend any time with finance is that wherever there's money, there's bad guys. And there's bad guys chasing that money. And in some ways, life is a series of cops and robbers. And you know, as as the technology moves, it's usually the robbers that get their hands on it first and figure it out. The job of the cops is to not be more than one step behind, but they're always one step behind.

Well, I want to I want to use that as a transition to talk about some of the um other work that you've done.

Yeah.

The work that you did also at the at the CFTC. You advise a lot of companies right now. Among those as Poly Market, Shane Koplin over at Poly Market um prediction markets, they are overseen by the by the CFTC. In your view, do you think the CFTC has the person power to regulate this entire industry?

Yeah. Well, if any agency does, it has to be the CFTC because these are truly markets. There's no borders on these. These are global markets.

So, so sports betting is a is a is a um

global market. So sports betting for the most part is a bookie model. There is a bookie who makes the odds and

not on prediction markets though.

Not on prediction markets, right? So we have traditionally regulated retail establishments at the state level and we regulate markets at the federal level. If you think about it, a bookie model is a retail establishment. The the retail establish establishment says here's our prices. You can take them, you can leave them, but you can't make them.

But I know the distinction you're going to make. Prediction markets are a market model. Therefore, they should be regulated by the CFTC.

Well, they should have to be regulated at a federal level because only a federal agency has the data sharing arrangements with British authorities, with European authorities, with Singapore, Japan to police global markets, markets that you can't confine with in a border. The state of Utah doesn't have that capability. The state of Colorado and certainly 50 different states are not going to result in a uniform regulatory process.

So, the CFTC knows how to regulate markets. Now, do we need new rules uh for things like um mention markets and some of these? Absolutely. And the CFTC is at work on it. Anytime you got a new technology, you're going to need to take some of these older rules and modify them for a new technology, but that has to be done at the federal level, not at a state level.

How long realistically do you think it could take before there are certain regulations that are actually set in place?

Um well, it'll be a lot faster if it's done by one agency rather than 50. Um, I think the CFTC is already working on, in fact, I know the CFTC is already working on this. They have announced some rule proposals. I think they'll get get it done pretty quickly.

But it seems like it's going to go straight to the Supreme Court because you have, you know, different different parts of the

A lot of money involved. That's why it's going to go to the Supreme Court.

A lot of money involved and some very powerful players who advise these, including, you know, Donald Trump Jr. being part of both companies, Koshi and Poly Market. Um, I'm just curious about the people who push back on on on the question of whether or not this stuff is actually good for society. This is a very existential question. But I have when I talk I talk a lot of prediction markets. I have people getting in touch with me on the Bloomberg terminal all the time tha