Crypto exchange Fastex is “shaping the future” of crypto compliance with its Web3 ecosystem, its Chief Legal Officer Vardan Khachatryan said in a recent interview.
Speaking to Rug Radio, Decrypt’s sister media outlet, at the DACOM Summit, Khachatryan highlighted Fastex’s ecosystem of current and upcoming products, including its centralized crypto exchange and NFT marketplace, layer-1 blockchain Bahamut Chain, and a forthcoming “crypto identity product.”
“Those kind of products are shaping the future of cryptocurrencies,” Khachatryan told Rug Radio creator Mlow. “Not just for the technology, but also for compliance and regulation.”
He pointed to “new requirements” emerging in the regulatory landscape such as travel rules. “These products can be not only just one step ahead in the crypto space and blockchain, but also resolve some of the challenges that companies face to be compliant for these requirements,” he said.
Those challenges include regulatory uncertainty, “particularly in the U.S., in terms of lack of regulation,” he said. With multiple regulatory bodies, including the SEC, IRS and CFTC, all taking their own approach to crypto, and “defining it from their perspective,” Khachatryan added, “this creates a lot of challenges for the players.”
“Most of the players want to be compliant, but they need to understand how to be,” he said, adding that, “A lot of the business decisions that are made are driven from the compliance standpoint.”
“You want to know where you are stepping into a market, and what laws exist, and how to be compliant,” he said. In the future, he hoped for more certainty among significant jurisdictions, enabling crypto firms to focus on “improving and getting into more markets and getting into new products,” rather than expending their efforts on “understanding whether if I do this move, will that be crossing a line?”
Another challenge for crypto firms is regulators’ lack of understanding of Web3 technology. “Not everybody really understands truly how the technology works,” he said, “especially when you go to the decentralized part of the technology—particularly for DeFi protocols, or layer-1s and on-chain transactions.” Although some crypto and DeFi activities are similar to those of traditional finance, he said, “This is a new technology— it needs a new approach, more tailor-made.”
Fastex, he said, has done “a huge amount of work” in order to meet the highest standards of compliance, including “adopting new systems for on-chain transactions, for KYC, for market surveillance.”
Europe’s Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation is a “huge step ahead” for the space, he said. He added that Fastex is “working very hard at the moment with the regulators in Europe” in order to obtain a license ahead of MiCA coming into force next year, which would enable “passporting between the European Union and European Economic Area.”
Looking to the future, he said, “The plans are to get as many licenses as possible, to be working in more regulated jurisdictions.” As yet, Fastex does not operate in the U.S., but is in the process of applying for licenses, he said. “hopefully, by the time we are ready to serve US users, there will be more certain regulations,” he said. “Hopefully that's going to be next year.” He added that, “for the U.S., we don’t want to wait anymore!”
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