Web3 leader Denelle Dixon on regulation

As a lawyer for Yahoo in 2007, Denelle Dixon watched Congress grill her bosses about the mishandling of personal user information. Now Dixon is the CEO of a nonprofit called Stellar Development Foundation, which focuses on smart contracts and cross-border payments to people without bank accounts. Incrypto sat down with her to talk regulation post-FTX crisis.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

We may be looking at some quickly unfolding regulation, which is an area where you have particular expertise. Is that also what you see coming?

Yeah, and the challenge that we now have is that Sam Bankman-Fried spent a lot of time gaining credibility with a lot of these regulators.

He was perhaps the biggest political player in crypto, and even donated $40 million. When his company falls apart, does that cause the political powers to wonder who they can trust?

I feel like as an industry, we’ve taken a tremendous amount of steps forward. And now we’re  100 steps back just from a policy standpoint because regulators are going to be concerned about who they can trust. It’s [definitely] one of my biggest concerns.

Do you think we’re going to have political theater? Whether it’s Elizabeth Warren or AOC,  they’re going to want to question the people involved in consumer protection.

Yeah, I do. You see that already happening with Warren’s letter [last month] where there’s a lot of good focus on consumer protection. And unfortunately, this allows those who are already very skeptical of this industry to layer on that skepticism.

How do you evangelize to lay people that the blockchain technology underneath crypto has nothing to do with coin prices or these scandals?

When you’re dealing with value and people’s money, it’s very hard for people to make that distinction. They’re going to be concerned about crypto…which is why one of the things we always really focus on is the use of stablecoins. We’ve already seen an increase in stablecoin usage.

When this all subsides, how does the industry return to the benefits of blockchain and give people that much subtler message?

I’ve been before Congress three or four different times, and every single time I am there to talk about the use cases. And frankly, it’s incumbent upon all of us to be there to talk about the use cases…We’re working right now with really large NGOs to deliver aid into countries that really need that aid [and] leveraging the blockchain…You know, when you’re in the mud, it’s hard to climb out of it. But I feel very positive about our future because I know what this technology can do.—JE