Money Crypto Versus Tech Crypto

Money crypto and tech crypto present different risks that public policy might address. In money crypto, the risks look more or less as they do in traditional finance: third-party custody, third-party-facilitated payments, retail investor protection, illicit finance and market manipulation, among other things. CeFi looks a lot like traditional finance (TradFi), after all. Tech crypto risk encompasses some of these categories but includes entirely different ones, too: hazardous self-custody, vulnerable smart contracts, good and bad actors having equal access and public, pseudonymous and irreversible transactions. DeFi opens up a whole different problem set with which public policy is unfamiliar.