JW Verret is following the money – while advocating for crypto

JW Verrett is a Harvard-educated attorney who teaches corporate finance and accounting at George Mason University. His work has been associated with the cryptocurrency sector in recent years, as his group's Twitter followers – who he knows as “BlockProf” or the Blockchain Professor – actively recognize him.

In addition to his work at GMU, Verrett is known as a senior fellow at the Crypto Freedom Lab and a collaborative advocate dedicated to protecting “freedom and privacy for crypto developers and users.” He also serves as a professional legal witness for defendants accused — wrongly, Veret argues — of evading money laundering laws and is writing a book titled “Blockchain Privacy and Forensics.” In between, he finds time to serve as a regular columnist for Cointelegraph.

1) You're very busy professionally – teaching at George Mason University, serving on committees with the Securities and Exchange Commission, going to trials as an expert witness. How did life lead you to cryptocurrency?

I spent 15 years as a libertarian regulatory/financial person, wrote it, think-tanked in Washington DC for the first 10 years, lost everything I fought for during the Dodd-Frank era.

The thing with crypto is that it is a liberating revolution in finance. Government regulation only fixes or aims to fix problems in finance. The regulation binds the middlemen through which crypto settles problems, eliminating the need for those middlemen. And that was really fun for me.

2) He served on the SEC's Investor Advisory Committee, but was very vocal in his criticism of SEC Chairman Gary Gensler. How was that experience?

It was good. I replaced Hester Peirce when she became SEC commissioner. I've written a lot of dissents as a committee member, so I hope Hester is proud, but I don't think I'll be invited back under the current chairman. It seems he is just trying to destroy this industry.

He could have reached out to the industry to make things work, but he has no interest in that and has sued some of the best actors in crypto – Coinbase and Kraken – while ignoring the worst.

3) You are a ZCash voter. Explain your interest there.

Zcash is like Bitcoin, but private. It's a great invention. Whoever developed it deserves a Nobel Prize.

I own several bitcoins. I think it's a great invention. But I think we need some privacy for day-to-day payments, and that's hard to get with Bitcoin. I am also a fan of Monero. It has great privacy technology. But they're both great projects – it's impossible to love both the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.

Also Read: Supreme Court Can End SEC War on Crypto

There are no other privacy signs in the same ballpark. There are some great innovations out there, but not at the level where you need to have the same privacy. Other projects I'm really excited about are Samurai Wallet and Sparrow Wallet, which offer a bit more privacy for Bitcoin transactions.

4) On that note, how do you think the future of crypto is going to unfold? Is it defined as a way to achieve more privacy in transactions? Is efficiency defined as easier to use than traditional financial instruments? Is it defined by crime? Or will it be some combination of these?

It's a strange question. I think it will be some combination of all those things. Crime is often a test case for new technologies. Of course it was for the internet. In the 1990s, many criminals used the Internet. I think the strongest forces in determining which cryptos will survive will be a mix of efficiency and scale, but I think privacy will be a part of it. As governments and large corporations grapple with untrusted and decentralized asset transfers, the only way to protect yourself is by using privacy coins and privacy protocols.

5) They are also serving as an expert witness in the USS Sterlilov, where the US government is paying 33-year-old Roman Sterlilov for developing Bitcoin Fog. The FBI arrested and charged him at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in 2021. [Bitcoin Fog] It grossed $336 million. Tell me about this.

I spend a lot of time as a forensic accountant, but I'm also into privacy. Some people think this is a conflict: how can you be private when you follow the money? But I don't see that as a conflict at all. Some of the people I know who are into privacy are forensic investigators. I am a believer in public information. People need to learn what it takes to be private. The worst people aren't smart anyway – they make mistakes and don't use privacy tools well.

Also Read: CipherTrace Expert Says Chainalysis Data Contributed To Bitcoin Fog Founder's ‘Wrongful Arrest'

In terms of USS Sterlinov, I am providing some expert assistance in forensic accounting and money laundering. Combining my legal and accounting perspectives will be beneficial to assist the legal team. I'm also in the business of helping clients of large crypto exchanges when their crypto is frozen and we finally unfreeze it when we find out that the client did nothing wrong – but was falsely flagged by crypto detection tools.

False positives in crypto tracing can have real value and this is one thing that worries me about the dominance of some tracing companies. TRM and Ciphertrace seem to be trying to get things right – and not pass their detection capabilities – but that's not true for every organization in this industry.

6) I hear you have an opinion about UFOs. Can you tell us what you know?

I'm really into podcasts about the history of UFO investigations. Some of the best ones are “The Stranger” and “Top Stranger”. J. I recommend reading Allen Hynek “The Hynek UFO Report”. He was a physics professor at a small school. [Ohio State] And the Air Force asked him to look at it one day. I think they thought he was going to be the front man – and he was, but then it changed.

The government knows no more now than it did 50 years ago. They may know more than they share, but I don't think they do. The revelations of the Navy pilot are quite impressive. So I think they are. I think they're probably detectives with no characters – no Armageddon or plot. I think they want to see what we're up to.

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Rudy Takala

Rudy Takala is an opinion editor at Cointelegraph. He previously worked as an editor or reporter in newsrooms including Fox News, The Hill and the Washington Examiner. He received his master's degree in Political Communication from American University in Washington, DC.