“My name is David Siegel, I am a regulatory refugee from the United States.” This is how David Siegel, founder of crypto projects Pillar and 20|30, starts his presentations.
What challenges have you faced building projects within the blockchain industry?
Siegel understands the need for innovation and disruption within economies, and he can get more done in the UK and Europe than he can in the US. His frustration is that institutional legacy mindsets are holding society back at the precise point when we have the ability to leap forward. I can hear the frustration in his voice as we talk.
“Building projects in crypto and blockchain is a lot like building projects in the regular business world. One of the biggest challenges we have is finding top coders. Cryptographers are easy to come by these days, but top-tier coders remain scarce.”
How has the “Crypto Winter” has impacted project funding?
The Crypto Winter has pushed the global crypto market cap into the toilet. When questioned about the implications of this prolonged bear market, Siegel paused for a moment before sighing and responding flatly:
“This Crypto Winter is the death of an era. For about 18 months between January 2017 and August 2018, open-source projects—smart people with no other fundraising opportunities—could build infrastructure for a new century of progress, and now that window is closed, probably forever.
Siegel continued, laying the blame at the feet of the US Securities and Exchange Commission:
“The SEC is largely responsible for what has happened, and should be doing more to foster innovation, not starve it. They created a self-fulfilling prophecy: by expressing their concerns that this would be bad for investors, they made it very bad for investors. Unless the US can enact new legislation to promote blockchain and decentralization, the US will be left behind. Other countries are more than happy to accept…
