The spot E ETF and the Advancement of the Fit 21 Bill. We continue to look at how other governments are approaching crypto joining us. Now to chat is Bermuda, Premier David Burt, premier, welcome to the show. Melissa. Good to see you again to see you again. You’re back at consensus 2024. Gotta ask you what you’re looking forward to, given what’s going on in the market. It’s a little bit of a different feeling than last year. Well, I guess so. I mean, my first consensus was 2018. So I’m kind of uh old hat at this, I guess you would say. Uh but from the perspective of what we are doing in Bermuda, uh we’re just here to uh see uh the companies. We know that we have large companies that are offered in Bermuda. We know that people have been able to do things in Bermuda that they’re struggling to do another jurisdiction around the world and having provided regulatory clarity since 2018 with names like Coinbase and Circle and others who are inside and the ones that are coming on board. We’re just pleased with the progress and we’re here, our regulator is here, the head of our regulatory agency is here. Our other regulators are service providers and we’re just here to make sure that for those people who are looking to do business internationally, they know they have a home in Bermuda. So, uh usually Bermuda announced a uh a partnership with a company called Guia. He just tell us a little bit about what that means, what that looks like and what that will mean for Bermuda going forward. Well, I think that was a really big announcement wea um is a subsidiary of Bank Colombia. They are um and they launched a stablecoin, a Colombian rap uh RT Peso in Bermuda out of um under our regulatory regime. And this is just an example of the types of regulation that we have in place where a company out of Colombia figured that the best place to launch a stablecoin for Colombian Peso would be in Bermuda that would be regulated and uh that they can use and expand. And so from that perspective, those are the types of important items of the work was done uh through alpha as well, who’s been working with Bermuda for quite some time. And so from that perspective, it just demonstrates the things that we are able to do under our regulatory regime which quite frankly can’t be done in many other places in the world. Talk to me how this works, right? Guia is a Colombian subsidiary of bank Colombia but regulated in Bermuda. How does that work? How does it work? How does it, how does it work? How, why is it and why is this Colombian subsidiary regulated in Bermuda? What kind of protections do Bermuda and Colombian citizens have, who are gonna be using the product? Well, I think that’s a very great question and it’s, we have to remember Bermuda’s history. Bermuda is one of the most respected international financial centers on the planet and that is the reason why global banks and others are comfortable coming to Bermuda underneath our regulatory regime. Look, we have some of the largest insurers in the world. We have asset managers in Bermuda and now we’re having large digital asset firms that are realizing how they can do things in digital finance to serve global markets. So you have to be a Bermuda company in order to be regulated on the Bermuda Monetary. They set up a subsidiary and they’re able to do something there because they looked at all the other jurisdictions around the world, all the other places. And they said this is the right place where we can actually issue stable coins. So they’re not the only stable coin. I mean Mountain Mountain Protocol is there who’s doing other things there, you know, so we’ve been doing things in Bermuda and pushing that, I guess I would say innovation envelope. So one thing that’s really interesting to me, a lot of jurisdictions, uh I say a lot, there are some countries that would panic that they, you know, at the idea of a stablecoin peg to, you know, the currency of another nation. Uh, we’ve seen, you know, these things get banned in certain countries. Um, you know, what gives you comfort with this. So, uh, you know, how are you so flexible that this is a product that you’re, you know, totally cool with. So our regulator is really good at focusing on the risks that are inherent in any technology rather than trying to, you know, pigeonhole something. And so we look at what the risks are. Our regulator identifies those risks and make sure those risks are managed to ensure that uh persons who are holding these assets are protected, to ensure that, you know, the security risks are addressed to make sure the AM L address. So that’s what we’ve done. Um And we’ve had success at it. It’s important to know Nick as you would understand. We’ve been doing this since 2018. So it’s not as though we’re just figuring out how to do this. We’ve been doing this for a very long time. We are kind of, you know, I guess you can call us the ogs when it comes to regulation and crypto. But from that perspective, we’re proud of what we’ve accomplished and the companies are taking notice. Now, I asked Robert this uh earlier, how closely are you watching other regions that are courting themselves, uh web three hubs. They’re really focusing on regulation. They’re really focusing on getting firms crypto start ups from maybe other places where there’s not as clear regulation over uh to their jurisdictions. How closely are you watching them and what’s giving Bermuda a competitive advantage there. So from that perspective, we are not necessarily trying to compete with the, um, you know, back in 2018, we were at our first consensus that was more of the strategy from a company uh from a country perspective. But we realized that because of the high standards that we have, that we cannot be all things to all people in all companies, we want the big established names that know what they need to do in order to make sure they can stand up to the scrutiny of our regulator. You have to remember when it comes to AM L for instance, we start at this, there were no Fat F rules, we had to invent our own. And when Fat F came out with their rules, our rules were actually higher than theirs. So we had to tone down our rules to basically match, we know how to do this in regulation. So other jurisdictions may, but when you look at companies such as the Coinbase, who will look around to see all the things or such as a wea who will look around our bank Columbia to see all of the various jurisdictions, they will choose quality. We’re not trying to go for at low bar, we want the best companies because this is a long haul digital finance is going to be the future. What you see here at consensus is the innovation of the future economy. And Bermuda has always been a home of innovation and we’re just going to continue to attract those companies who want to actually be credible to their shareholders, credible to investors raise that money. And having a regulatory stamp of approval from Bermuda is the best ticket to go ahead and do that. So, looking ahead of it, uh you know, one of the conversations I have all the time with people is uh every time you think you have your head wrapped around crypto, they come and build some other brand new novel, you know, weird thing. Um How are you looking ahead to, you know, kind of continuing to adjust and update, you know, any regulatory frameworks to deal with, you know, new leverage products or uh tokenize, you know, what not? Well, that’s a great question. Um When we talk about you leverage products, we’ve been doing regulating yield products for the last three years. And so we’ve had persons that have been issuing items that have been yielding products out of Bermuda uh for a while. But when we talk about what’s happening in the future, our next step is certainly going around digital identity. And we look at that from the perspective of a regulatory problem and a technology problem where we will license digital identity service providers and those persons who have those particular credentials will be able to you, but we will be able to, you know, have smoother access through the AM L controls, et cetera. That will help our companies in the, uh, space, uh, deal with the compliance costs because compliance costs are, um, a challenge for all industries that are dealing in regulated. Um uh I guess I’d say regulated markets, but our perspective is looking there. So if you look at our history, we started basic, then we added clarity for uh derivatives, then we added clarity for staking and lending. Now we’re going into go into digital identity. We’re also uh going to look forward about how we deal with PS and those type of items. So for us, it’s the continued evolution. But the important thing to remember is this isn’t new. We’ve been doing this since 2018 on the topic of digital identity. I wanna take this a little bit um out to left field here. I know there’s some Latin American countries that are actually implementing uh digital identity protocols within their government services. And now that you’re looking into digital identity from a regulatory front, would the government consider um implementing digital identities uh for so people could have better access to some of the government documents that are so difficult to get. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to get a birth certificate or a marriage certificate. It’s pretty, it’s a pretty laborious process from the perspective of government based credentials. Uh, we are doing that inside of our health care sector where we’re issuing, uh, things and other matters may advance. But I think it’s important to note that whether it’s from the approach of which we take to CBD CS and stable coins where we do not want to issue one, we let the private sector and anything that is regulated is accepted by the governor of Utah or whether or not we look at the way that we go in the digital identity space where it is anyone who has the um regulatory authority to issue it will be accepted to of Bermuda. We think that’s a better way to work. We think it’s better for the market to go ahead and to bring these solutions rather than the government to do it. And that’s Bermuda’s unique proposition because, you know, we’re a very small country, 20 square miles, 65,000 people. But we’re the ideal test bed for companies to say, let’s go ahead and do this so we can scale globally. People aren’t going to make significant money by dealing with Bermuda market. But if they perfect in the Bermuda market, they can raise capital and scale those matters globally. And that’s where we um intend to be all right, Premier as you know, we are at consensus 2024 we’re having lively conversations here all day before we let you go. What are you looking forward to? It doesn’t have to be anything official. Also, there are a lot of events happening outside of what’s going on here. Uh I believe there’s a karate combat happening tomorrow. What are you looking forward to? Um, yes. Uh, there is karate combat tomorrow. I mean, for me, I am, uh, just here as I said, with the delegation, we have a 20 strong delegation uh that has come here from Bermuda with our regulator, our law firms, our service providers, the persons from our concierge service and we’re just going to meet with the companies in the space that are looking uh to advance. I mean, consensus is something that I’ve been doing for a while. I enjoy it, catch up with friends like Robert and others. So uh just looking forward and then, um I, unfortunately, I’m not here on Friday because I have to leave bright and early to make it back for parliament on Friday in Bermuda. So uh can’t have um I guess uh all, all of the uh experience, but I’m happy to be here with my team premier. It was a pleasure having a conversation with you again here at consensus. Thanks for joining us. It’s good to see you again. That was Bermuda premier David Bart.
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