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Is That Even Legal?
Is That Even Legal?
Be Careful With Crypto!
What happens when someone dies with cryptocurrency assets but no one can find the keys? Is cryptocurrency just a modern version of the "wooden nickel" scam? How are sophisticated criminals using digital currency to pull off multi-million dollar heists—and why is 2025 shaping up to be the most dangerous year yet for crypto investors?
Former federal prosecutor Seth Goertz pulls back the curtain on the mysterious world of cryptocurrency, offering rare insights from his extensive experience investigating financial fraud and cybercrimes. This fascinating conversation takes us from the practical headaches facing probate attorneys dealing with crypto assets to the sophisticated "pig butchering" schemes that have become one of the FBI's most concerning fraud trends.
And the stakes have never been higher. With over $2.17 billion stolen from cryptocurrency services in just the first half of 2025, this year has already surpassed the total losses of 2024. The DPRK’s $1.5 billion hack of ByBit—the largest in crypto history—has sent shockwaves through the industry. Meanwhile, personal wallet compromises now account for nearly a quarter of all stolen funds, and violent “wrench attacks” are on the rise, often timed with Bitcoin price surges.
Gertz explains the fundamental tension at the heart of cryptocurrency: created as "a civil libertarian dream scenario" to exist outside traditional finance, crypto enthusiasts now want integration with mainstream financial systems—but without the full regulatory burden. The result is a confusing landscape where stablecoins present themselves as safe investments while lacking the protections of traditional banking.
You’ll learn why cryptocurrency provides “an exponential ability to obfuscate funds,” making it the preferred tool for global money laundering, how the new Genius Act attempts to regulate stablecoins, and why these efforts may be mere “half measures.” We also explore how laundering behavior is evolving, with criminals now leaving billions in stolen crypto on-chain, and how regional trends are shaping the global threat landscape.
Whether you're curious about blockchain technology, considering a crypto investment, or simply want to understand the legal implications of this rapidly evolving field, this episode provides essential context from someone who's seen the industry from all angles. Subscribe now, share with friends considering crypto investments, and let us know your thoughts about the future of digital currency regulation.
Is that even legal? It's a question we ask ourselves on a daily basis. We ask it about our neighbors, we ask it about our elected officials, we ask it about our family and sometimes we ask it to ourselves. The law is complex and it impacts everyone all the time, and that's why we are here. I'm attorney Bob Sewell and this is season five of the Worldwide Podcast that explores that one burning question. Is that even legal? Let's go. Today's guest on the show is Seth Goertz. Seth is a former federal prosecutor. He handles handled a lot of issues involving financial fraud and cyber crimes. His advice is sought all over the country and he is a great attorney over at Dorsey Whitney and in the Phoenix office. So welcome to the show.
Seth Goertz:Yeah, thanks, appreciate it, appreciate the opportunity to be on.
Bob Sewell:All right, so you are a fancy lawyer. I mean, you're handling high level financial issues. I am a humble, humble, very humble probate attorney. Okay, I'm not so humble, but I am a probate attorney.
Bob Sewell:There's a couple of things that have come up in my practice and involving involving cryptocurrency, and it's just such such an odd thing for me. You know, we've, when people die, they leave behind assets, and here you have assets of cryptocurrency and a lot of times this, this stuff is just odd, and a lot of times this stuff is just odd. And sometimes the decedent they fancy themselves investors and speculators and they would tell people I am a multimillionaire in crypto. And then when we get to the crypto itself, the crypto is like maybe 5, 10 grand and we're like maybe not that multimillionaire, maybe that that hundred thousandaire that he was holding himself out to be. And then sometimes we knew that we know there's crypto, but it's there was, it was some on some sort of block chain and it's on a.
Bob Sewell:You know you need the keys, but who knows where the keys are? Because you know the guy was sick for a year. And then sometimes you know the stuff is traded on a weird platform and the platform is incredibly dense to get to and it's it's pretty much lost, because you can't reach the platform and show them your letters of representation and get the coin back, and so you end up with this weird asset that was only particularly valuable to the person who originally bought it, and you start to wonder, well, what's the utility of this crap and what are we doing here with crypto?
Seth Goertz:So tell me are we all high?
Bob Sewell:Are we all high and is it the 18th century and we're speculating on non-existent railroads and things like this? Or is there something really involved in cryptocurrency, michael?
Seth Goertz:GREENSTONE. Well, what are we doing here with crypto? The interesting thing is, I think it covers actually the full spectrum of what you've talked about At some level. There is what people are saying about some of the recent legislation related to the Genius Act, for instance, and stablecoins is that it will actually take us back to a financial system that's like pre-World War II, before we had sort of centralized banks and anyone could sort of create assets as they wanted to and it's difficult to sort of get any of those secured unless they're actually strict regulations. And so you had all these stories pre-Civil War of like people, like like the state of michigan had more losses and unsecured, basically, finances than it had like entire, like profit for the entire state, you know, and so wait wait, wait, help me out with that, because you're you're getting my mind tickled onto a little subject, you?
Bob Sewell:you remember I don't know if you've heard the term when someone leaves the house, they say don't take any wooden nickels, right? I mean, this is what we're talking about here, right? These? These people who have created their coins or their whatever it is their currency, their private currency, from whatever bank they're issuing from?
Seth Goertz:from. Is that what we're talking about? No, 100%. Cryptocurrency, on a basic level, is a decentralized financial scheme or platform or opportunity, and its value is insofar as the owners of that believe it has its worth, tethered totally outside of the financial system. That's the point of cryptocurrency. You start getting into stable coins and their types of assets that are purport to be backed by a traditional fiat currency like a dollar. That's what a stable coin is and that's where, ironically, this movement that started as an attempt to move away from the traditional financial system in the wake of the global financial collapse of the mid-aughts, now you're seeing it ironically try to merge back into the financial system through stable coins because of exactly the problem you talked about the wooden nickel. That's why you see these enormous fluctuations in the value of various types of cryptocurrencies that aren't tied to a sort of stable asset.
Bob Sewell:Well, what is that term? And that you mentioned the Genius Act and that was another thing that brought me to want to discuss the subject was because everyone you hear on the news and the news was talking about the Genius Act and it's going to revolutionize or not revolutionize or damage the stable coin industry. I don't even know what a stable coin is. Tell me what that is.
Seth Goertz:Yeah so a stable coin is a cryptocurrency that is actually backed by an asset In most cases. Initially, the most prominent one is called Tether and it is backed to the dollar. It's a stable coin because it trades and it is backed to the dollar. It's a stable coin because it trades and fluctuates along with the dollar. One Tether is equivalent to $1. Now that is actually contrary to the way in which cryptocurrency was set up, ironically, to be a decentralized financial platform that's not based upon fiat currency or the dollar, like Bitcoin, for instance, has no sort of relationship to the dollar. It's not backed by, it's its own thing and it will fluctuate differently than the market. Now, because it's becoming more mainstream and more people hold it, you're starting to see Bitcoin mirror market fluctuations, but that has not been the case and most cryptocurrency is not.
Seth Goertz:Let's quote stable coins. Stable coins are this unique thing where it's a cryptocurrency, it's traded on a blockchain and it's held by a cryptocurrency the creator but it is backed by a dollar or some other. Traditionally, it's backed by fiat currency, which is like a dollar or some real. I say that when quotes currency. What the Genius Act is allowing is trying to make stablecoins more prevalent. Under the Genius Act. Effectively, the hope is to have broader adoption of these stablecoins Beyond just cryptocurrency that's attached to the dollar. In theory, any financial entity or company can create a under the Genius Act can create a cryptocurrency so long as it's backed by a stable asset, and he says here's what our asset is Like. Walmart could create like a Walmart coin so long as they have a one-to-one asset that they're tracking to sort of back the coin. This gets into your sort of wooden nickel problem, though.
Bob Sewell:Right, and I think it was in reaction to some of the failed quote unquote stable coins. And what's fascinating to me, just from a thought perspective, a thought experiment, rather, here we have an asset, a stable coin, and it's a one-to-one ratio, allegedly Typically, it's set through an algorithm, and how they monitor it's it's uh, it's make it quote unquote stable right, monitor the stability. And and with regard to the genius act, the genius act comes in and says okay, this is what a stable coin is, sets a definition, and then, and by the way, you have to have a disclosures on a regular basis of your assets, and if you don't do these things and follow our rules, you could have criminal liability. And if you don't, uh and and um, you actually have to be backed by real assets. And it lists the real types of assets and it looks like a non-inclusive list, but we want you to have it.
Bob Sewell:And then it says and, by the way, we're going to institute regular rulemaking, so we're going to set up this system for rulemaking and then you people really are going to have something there. Does this make sense? I mean, you mentioned, hey, this is the Wild West. We're trying to get away from the centralized banks regulation. And now we're sitting back and we're saying, no, we're going to regulate the hell out of this.
Seth Goertz:Well, a lot of things there. I think a tickler for you is that stable coins in some ways are a solution in search of a problem. I sort of think, because what is the point? I mean, it's sort of hard to find a use case for a stablecoin in some ways outside of crypto enthusiasts, because all it is is effective. I mean, if you're a normal rational investor or user of the financial system, it's hard to explain or hard to come up with a reason why I would want Tether that's back to the dollar as opposed to just a dollar in my bank or in the stock market. Because what I will say, getting into the regulation piece, is that if you're a user, all of that regulation in terms of how they need to account for the underlying assets and protecting you and the users is hugely important. If my bank goes under, if it's FDI insured, I have some security that I'm not going to lose all of insured. I have some security that I'm not going to lose all of my money. I have some security that the bank is taking care of my assets. My financial advisor I have a lot of like. All those regulations are important to the sort of security of the financial system, and that's why the dollar is sort of an important thing.
Seth Goertz:Cryptocurrency has always been its own its old thing, sort of an important thing. Cryptocurrency has always been its own its old thing, and so a stable coin right traditionally has only been used by criminals. This is what people in the anti-money laundering space will tell you. Criminals are the only ones who hold. Primarily criminals hold, to the extent they're holding, cryptocurrency. It is, by and large, stable coins because they're backed to a dollar.
Bob Sewell:Wait, wait, wait, hold on a second, Hold on, hold on. This is what I have suspected all along that the utility of Bitcoin generally Well, not.
Seth Goertz:Bitcoin, not Bitcoin. I would say stablecoin. That's the irony of it.
Bob Sewell:That's the irony of it Is transacting behind closed doors. Yes, it's the black market.
Seth Goertz:Well, okay, that is true. I mean, that's part of the value of cryptocurrency. I think if you are a investor, for instance, let's sort of break out the buckets. If you're just sort of an investor who's a crypto enthusiast like Bitcoin makes a tremendous sense or other sorts of cryptocurrencies that are decentralized because they have the opportunity to have these wild fluctuations, and if you're chasing that and true investor, like that makes sort of rational sense it's hard to justify a use case for stable coins. That's why the crypto enthusiasts are so aggressively trying to promote this and that's why they want this regulation.
Seth Goertz:Because within the traditional financial system, I can go on PayPal, I can use my Apple Pay, I can make financial transactions incredibly fast on a digital platform already. I don't need a stablecoin to do this. If I'm a criminal and I've just laundered $100 million and I don't want it to lose all its value tomorrow because Bitcoin crashes and I would like to anonymously move it somewhere that a government can't see that will be safe and mirror the growth of the dollar, I'm a thousand percent going to choose a stable coin. But the tension among crypto enthusiasts and people trying to build out crypto more generally speaking is that a stable coin is something everyone understands because it's tied to a dollar, because it's tied to something tangible and it has the veneer of this kind of authenticity, legitimacy and protection.
Bob Sewell:What is a meme coin? We talked about a stable coin. What is a meme coin?
Seth Goertz:Meme coins are these things where you hear about, like the Dogecoin, for instance, or like the Melania and Trump coins? Those are purely like the Melania and Trump coins. Those are purely. It is the opposite. You have Bitcoin, which is legitimate I'm not saying they're not legitimate, but Bitcoin was the initial crypto and that starts as a decentralized asset that's attempting to exist in a financial system outside of our traditional fiat world, right, and you have stable coins tied to real finance. Meme coins are this kind of play thing that exists because anyone can really create a digital asset. So it's a digital asset that exists. It's not tied to a dollar and it's unclear that it's sort of a serious type of thing people want to actually use to transact. It is something that's created for sort of novelty purposes, like the Dogecoin and I think, for instance, was you able to use it like Mavericks games.
Seth Goertz:Yes, you have these specific coins that are oftentimes they exist. They're creative, like single purpose coins or assets, essentially Like some of them you can use specifically, like in a Mavericks basketball game that was one of these meme coins. It was like you can purchase stuff you know for this professional sports team or you can use it to transact business with, like just a specific entity or you know purpose. So it's a it's sort of not a novelty coin is kind of the way to like. Think about it. They're rarely serious and they're rarely sort of worth much. But you see a tremendous amount of fraud related to meme coins when you talk about old school pump and dump schemes.
Seth Goertz:Meme coins are hugely susceptible to standard investment fraud schemes and straightforward wire fraud. I am pumping this up. I'm telling you it's super valuable. Here's all the people that are invested, here's what its current value is, here's what we've got. Come buy more. You get a wave of people buying and then the owners who hold the value just sell it. All right, and that was like you know. Certain people were saying that was exactly what was going on with the Trump and Melania coins. It was just a meme coin that was being propped up and then it was going to be sold out as soon as it reached a critical mass.
Bob Sewell:That's it, see. Okay, so this is one of the things we see, that the federal government does this genius act. It appears to be regulating. It might be trying to bring legitimacy to the process. It might be trying to avoid the collapse that we saw in the FTX, stablecoin or some of the other ones. I think we had the, what was some of the others, the Terra, the Terra UST. Maybe they're trying to grab hold of a market.
Bob Sewell:When you say stablecoin, does it really mean stable? I mean, there's an article on Moody's that says are they stable? And the answer is not always so. Maybe there's a protection of the public aspect to this. But then we have these meme coins and some of them, like you just described, may or may not have any sort of utility at all. Some of them might have limited utility, some of them might be just complete speculations. But whenever we have this sort of thing, these complete speculations, we have the potential for public risk. Is that an argument for regulation? Should we be regulating more? And, if so, have you seen any frauds in this type of arena?
Seth Goertz:Oh, I mean financial fraud is something we deal with all over the place. Cryptocurrency, though, is a unique vehicle for fraud, both because of the ability to launder cryptocurrency. Much more are called like tumblers, for instance. So, if you think of like a traditional system, I send money to your bank account and you want to launder this, you have to move it to another bank account, to another company. You have to create some sort of there's a sort of structuring you have to do to successfully launder money through the traditional financial system, and that's done, and that happens all the time. Through cryptocurrency, though, what you have are you have a blockchain, and so, for the most part, every transaction that's ever occurred is public and you can recreate it, but most of those are anonymous and you don't know who is doing what, and what you also have is the ability to segregate certain funds, basically in the layman's terms, between different accounts, and so, in 30 seconds, what I could do with cryptocurrency is move it and say I have $100 in cryptocurrency.
Seth Goertz:That $100 could be segregated into thousands of accounts, instantaneously moved through a network and commingled with other funds and then moved into downstream 15 other accounts. Right, I mean, you have an exponential ability to obfuscate funds and to move them quickly into different areas that make it virtually impossible to trace. And so and there are very sophisticated, very sophisticated and this is what the crypto enthusiasts will tell you because it exists, because it's on a public blockchain, we can see it all, and so you can recreate it and you can reconstruct the flow of all these transactions. And that's somewhat true, except that there are very sophisticated, essentially laundering tools to hide and obfuscate funds. And when you don't know who the owners are, when it's totally anonymous, that makes it more difficult. And when you have a lot of these cryptocurrency exchanges that are based overseas, they're not required to comply with the US government process, so getting them to cooperate to subpoenas, to search warrants, you don't have the ability to do that. So it is indisputable that cryptocurrency provides a vehicle to launder funds that we haven't seen before and is incredibly effective. That is why the majority of global money laundering occurs via cryptocurrency. I would suspect I haven't done the numbers, but I would suspect the majority of that is on stablecoins, for the reason I talked about in terms of being protected by the dollar.
Seth Goertz:The other fraud that you see is just, I think, people being unaware of cryptocurrency, how it works and how safe it is and how protected it is. I think that's one thing where some of the stuff where we're hearing about Genius Act and the regulation I think people assume people do not appreciate the general public, how, in some ways, safe and important the regulations are for a traditional bank and all of the Bank Secrecy Act, anti-money laundering rules, what being FDI insured means. None of that exists in cryptocurrency. I mean, there are some Bank Secrecy Act rules. There are some KYC your customer rules. There's some anti-money laundering that applies, but not to the same extent. They're not FDIC insured. You really still are operating in the wild west and you hold cryptocurrency.
Seth Goertz:Now there's a lot of security and protection. This is where we get into why Bitcoin's not a total farce. There's a lot of security and protection. This is where we get into why Bitcoin's not a total farce. There's a lot of security and protection. I mean Bitcoin, cryptocurrency is based on cryptography, like advanced cryptography and these blockchains that are based on cryptographic ways to protect transactions so that you know that they're mutable, so that you can't go back and say this one never happened.
Seth Goertz:So there's a lot of advanced technology that undergirds the asset itself and the platform, and that's why you're seeing all of this development in Silicon Valley for blockchain technology. But that is different than the undulations of the crypto market and how safe the actual asset itself is from loss or exposure to fraudsters. Cryptocurrency has come a long way, but this sort of regulation that we're talking about still pales in comparison to the sort of regulation that a traditional bank would have to comply with, and even there you see stuff like Silicon Valley Bank collapsing, sort of based upon just like a simple run on the bank and them not having sort of sufficient account protocols and so like.
Bob Sewell:And that's one of the things that I saw that I want to talk about in crypto, in stablecoin, is so you know, we're all familiar with American banking system and we have fractional reserve banking, so our banks have a certain fraction of money on deposit and the rest of it is invested elsewhere, and it's typically invested in hard assets, mortgages and you know, I should say mortgages and treasuries and things like this. Okay, good assets, not necessarily hard assets. So now a stable coin and that has a fraction on reserve to maintain this, Allegedly it'll have a fraction on reserve, so when you need to withdraw your money, something's there, but you can make runs on that, which could end up causing the run out of reserves, right?
Seth Goertz:Yeah, and that's one of the things about the Genius Act, as I understand it, right. A couple of things, but one of the holes still in regulating stablecoins is that some of the compliance only applies when there's a certain sort of effectively assets at issue. So I think the threshold is like $10 billion or something. So if you have less than $10 billion, you don't have to comply with some of these things. Well, that could still be a cause for significant concern. Right, and so there are still some gaps that exist in terms of who's even under the umbrella of the Genius Act. The other issue is that exactly what you're talking about and it kind of goes back we're circling back to the wooden nickel thing. Like this assumes that the entity issuing the coin is actually doing their due diligence to ensure that there's a one-to-one backing and that they have all the necessary accounting protocols in place over time to ensure they have a robust platform in place, and it's not easy to do.
Seth Goertz:For instance, FTX is maybe an unfair example to poke at the crypto industry, but it's interesting in that FTX is going to return all of the losses, actually add more In the bankruptcy payout. I think it's going to make 110% of the payment. So it wasn't that they actually lost all of this money. It's that they had no accounting protocols in place and were lying about what they said they were doing in terms of securing and protecting and having a robust financial accounting platform. They didn't have any necessary controls, but not having those was significant and caused what appeared to be the collapse of FTX, and with it I mean FTX almost brought down the entire crypto industry in terms of the huge, really plummeting value, and some people then say that even had an impact subsequently on our traditional financial system. And that wasn't about they didn't actually quote lose anyone's money. It's all been returned. It was that they didn't have the necessary like accounting protocols and procedures in place that they should have, and that's what freaked everyone out.
Bob Sewell:Now, attorneys love gossip, and I'm certain you're not any different, and so and we hear things in our own particular industry, and we hear things in our own particular industry, and when we experience it too.
Seth Goertz:What other frauds have you seen in the crypto markets? Oh, there's, I mean, you name it and it's sort of just there's nothing new under the sun, I guess, and certainly in the crypto space, I think, one that's very prevalent right now that people are talking a lot about and I think is certainly worth shining a light on, I guess or public service announcement is this scheme called pig butchering, which is a terrible name, but it is effectively a crypto investment fraud scheme that is actually might be among the most prevalent fraud schemes currently occurring throughout the country.
Seth Goertz:How does it work, yeah, and so how does it work? Is it is being driven by organized crime in Southeast Asia, and so following, and this is right around the time of COVID and there are these large, essentially hotels where workers are being trafficked to basically do social media spoofing all day long, and what will happen is an unsuspecting victim will get a random WhatsApp text message, linkedin social media message from someone that appears to be an authentic profile and just sort of an innocuous, accidental message like hey, seth, or hey, it would be to me, but it would say hey, rob, sorry I missed you, we were at this convention and I want to talk about our financial holdings or something. I respond hey, sorry, wrong message. And then there's a sort of a and that's sort of how they begin. Not everyone, it doesn't happen to everyone, but there's a sort of a and that's sort of how they begin. Not everyone doesn't have with everyone, but there's a subsequent dialogue that then begins to happen and a lot of in these the fraudsters are take significant efforts to cultivate what appears to be a legitimate relationship, whether some of it's romance, but a lot of it is just sort of like gaining trust over a period of time, understanding the person. And then there will be and they will spend a lot of time discussing they won't be asking for a pitch, but their own wealth, their own sort of savvy with crypto. They will show them screenshots of profiles of their crypto investments and how they've been growing, pictures on private jets, lavish lifestyle and eventually they'll get an ask from the victim to sort of invest.
Seth Goertz:And in almost every case I prosecuted a number of these and in every case the victim will be pretty weary and leery and they will invest $10,000. And they'll see immediate returns. That $10,000 will grow to $100,000 overnight and then, like most savvy or smart people, these victims will ask to take half of that out and the fraudsters will let them, like in every case, and they get $50,000 out and at that point then the victim goes all in or puts in a substantial amount more of US dollars their money that will then be converted into cryptocurrency and sent to an address somewhere. At that point the money, for all intents and purposes, is gone. But what the fraudsters do and this is where technology enables these particular schemes is that they, both through screenshots and actual active working platforms, are able to create pretty easily platforms that mirror a Fidelity account or a Coinbase account, except that it won't be actually Coinbase, it'll be a spoof Coinbase, but it will look just like it and it will show their investment, the amounts and sort of how it is rapidly growing, because it's continuing to rapidly grow and the victim has trust that they have that this is real because they got there. Why would they get, you know, a 5X return right away if it wasn't legitimate? They start pouring more money in. They will often get friends to pour more money in and, as a result, this is one of the highest dollar amount fraud losses the FBI has been reporting over the last couple of years.
Seth Goertz:And the reason it's called pig butchering is because it comes out of Southeast Asia and China and, as the fraudsters describe it there, it's called fattening up the pig before the slaughter. And so that's the whole scheme is you cultivate a victim, you cultivate a relationship, a friendship, you get this investment and then you continue to build through the allowance of them to take money back these fake platforms and then, once all the money goes in, they ask for it back. They will actually. I mean, they get so absurd that the victims will say, all right, I want to withdraw some money. Oh, you can't do that, you got to pay taxes on it. What do you mean? I pay taxes? You have to pay taxes on all that you've gained before you can get the money out. Then they'll extract more money, and so it's a very sad and terrible sort of fraud that's happening, but it is one that I think preys on people's belief that cryptocurrency is this unique asset that will always grow at these sort of just exponential rates, because it's something kind of ethereal.
Bob Sewell:Yeah, and I've seen this before and it's sort of a fear of missing out, and I find I've had friends who are less sophisticated in investing and then I'm talking to a friend about it and my friend's, like you know, john Smith out there, john Smith, billy Bob, whoever it is he made $100,000 in crypto in a year.
Bob Sewell:I can't pass that up. I got to do it too, and you know, drops their money, and you know they don't have any traditional investments, they just have a savings account with 20 grand and or 30 grand, whatever you know, and they drop it into their crypto. And this is it. This is how they're going to. They're going to make, make the big time. They're going to be the crypto investor, and you know, and here we are Fear of missing out, right, I think there was a lot of that.
Seth Goertz:I think it's sort of this, it's fear of missing out, I wonder. But I also wonder. I think there's that for sure. There is also this just sort of belief that, because it's this new, novel thing, and you hear about these wild swings, you hear about the wild fluctuations, I think that is part of what gets people. But you know, I think you're right. I mean, there is a fear of missing out. It's sort of a it's this unknown, mysterious thing that perhaps has, and for certain people, I mean that the problem is a part of that is true. If I would have, you know, if I these, you know, stories of people buying, trying to use 10 Bitcoin to buy a pizza in 2010 are like real.
Bob Sewell:Yeah, yeah, I love that guy. He's a real dude. He did it.
Seth Goertz:Yes, yes. So I mean that really happened and there are really store and you look at how rapidly Bitcoin has risen in value, and you do yeah and you do say hey for 2016, it would have been pretty cheap for me to buy some of this. Or in 2014, I could have bought and now I'd be done working. Those stories do exist and so that is certainly, I think, why people it's part of the allure of it and this fear of not missing out, because certainly for some people and there is obvious evidence if you just look at the growth of Bitcoin and some of these others if you catch the right one at the right time, there is the opportunity for exponential growth. The same time, Go ahead.
Bob Sewell:I want to get back to one of the original questions and you danced a little bit and I understand you danced on this question, but I want to try to pin you down. We saw that we're starting to see regulations in this area. Yeah, and you know, and if in every other area of the financial world you know, there is just a crap ton of regulation, it's, it's literally. You know, if I stack up the banking regulations and and and the statutes, it would fill my office and that's not an exaggeration, that that's if I put it on a piece of paper. It would fill my office with paper. Impossible, right? I mean, you start to think about the regulation of securities and the sale of securities. But, on the other hand, the reason why we have these things is because we've learned by sad experience that there's nothing a man wouldn't do for money. Is it time to forego the civil libertarian thoughts and I love a civil libertarian argument Is it time to forego that and start and for the government to say hey, we're going to protect our populace.
Seth Goertz:Well, that is the question, right, that is the question what the point the sort of cryptocurrency was created exactly to be a civil libertarian sort of dream scenario, right, a civil libertarian dream scenario? It's a decentralized digital asset that exists outside the traditional financial system, that is based on incredibly novel technology that has a lot of use cases, but as it becomes more accessible and utilized, you start getting more people involved. As you get your grandparents holding digital assets and you have just rampant fraud within certain areas of it, the argument to protect the populace certainly comes in. I think a lot of that depends on your political, so what side of the political aisle you fall on. I think it is dependent on how you view these assets. But what I would say is I think I have skepticism about the current efforts to regulate cryptocurrency, because I think they are, in some ways, a little bit of a veneer, in that exactly what you're talking about in terms of the financial system, like the amount of regulations that apply to the traditional financial system, would fill your office and some of that's bureaucracy, but some of that is hundreds of years of seeing losses and exploitation and the harm that can happen when the system we all depend upon collapses, and so if we do want to create a class of digital asset that is that safe, then those are the rules that they're going to have to play by.
Seth Goertz:And right now, the crypto world and the crypto enthusiasts kind of want to half venture. They still want to be outside, but they want to be integrated on their own terms, and I just don't think that you can have it both ways, and I guess we'll see, but that's currently the debate is that some of this regulation they're just dipping their toe in the regulation, and what you're seeing from them the proponents is saying, hey, this is great. Look, we have AML, we have BSA, we have Animal Laundry, we have Bank Secrecy Act, we have rules now to codify what a stable asset needs to look like. And then you have all the people who've been in the financial world forever regulating that saying this is just a fraction of what is actually necessary to regulate this space, and these things are just sort of a veneer. These are half measures that aren't really going to achieve the types of things that a customer would expect in a regulated financial system, and I think that's where there is potential danger.
Seth Goertz:Is that the more in which cryptocurrency becomes mainstream, which I think there's plenty of use cases for it. That's totally fine, but the more in which the public begins to equate a cryptocurrency, the safety of crypto assets, versus the safety of traditional financial assets, that's where you could begin to. That's where there is potential harm because they are not remotely the same, and there's actually there's reasons for that. Like, that's, the whole point of cryptocurrency is to be separate from it, and so that's just what I find ironic. If you're a true crypto enthusiast, it's sort of hard for me to really like take serious, in some ways, the arguments to being so integrated into the traditional financial systems. That was the point was to not be a part of this and to do your own thing, and now you're bending over backwards to try to find a way in which you want to participate, but not entirely, and it's a jumbled world, but that's, I think, where you're seeing the tension.
Bob Sewell:Seth, thanks for coming on the show. It's been. It's been a pleasure. You've taught me a lot and it's been interesting.
Seth Goertz:I feel like I've addressed the future in crypto here So thanks for coming on the show. Absolutely Happy to be on and look forward to talking about your Bitcoin investments, yeah.
Bob Sewell:Thanks for listening to the podcast. Is that even legal is now listened to in 100 countries and available on virtually all podcast platforms. Leave us a review, send us some show ideas and do so at producer at evenlegalcom. Don't forget, as smart as we sound and as lovable as we are, we are not your lawyers and we are not giving you legal advice. But if you need some legal advice, get some. There are some great lawyers out there and we are always ready to help. See you next time.