DeFi Regulation & Risk: A Masterclass with TuongVy Le, General Counsel, Veda

Welcome butterscotch queens and kings to your only source for inclusive and comprehensive crypto coverage.

This is The Get Down, a podcast diving deep into Web 3 and D5.

I'm your host, Ritzy P.

Each episode, I get down with diverse founders, builders, change makers, and executives in the cryptoverse.

The crypto industry is not a monolith.

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Join diverse discussions on policy trends and market research about the blockchain ecosystem.

Welcome to The Get Down.

Hola and welcome to The Get Down, the Beyond Bitcoin podcast.

I'm Richie P.

In this segment of All Things butterscotch with CEO and managing editor of Butterscotch Media, Clive Messador, we'll share some updates and we'll discuss her interview with V Lee, who is the general counsel for Veda, a crypto infrastructure company helping to make DeFi programmable and accessible for all.

We'll go into how this crypto-legal eagle slays.

Policy.

Ole Cliff, how are you?

Hey there, I'm excited for this conversation that's coming up.

So can we discuss how you guys know each other?

Yeah, V is amazing.

She, you know, has been in crypto since 2021, which we'll get into during the podcast interview, but she is one of those bosses in the space.

She's smart.

She, you know, does the rounds.

Uh, around, you know, crypto conferences is a speaker.

She's also participated in some, some of the web 3 women events that I've organized.

So I'm so excited to actually have her on and learn more about her story and share her story with our audience.

I'm excited to tune in.

So both of you guys will be in Arizona for the Eve Wealth Summit.

Tell us more about that.

Yeah, Eve Wolf is a platform.

That focuses on fintech and digital assets, and last year they had their first annual wealth summit in Arizona in this beautiful, beautiful spa.

So she and I are both speakers this year.

So I believe the conference starts on April 21st.

So we'll both be in Arizona for the Eve Wealth with other women across the Dei and Web 3 space to talk about.

The future of digital finance.

So this conversation is very timely as it sets the stage for, you know, what will be happening, you know, shortly in Arizona.

Fantastic.

Safe travels to that.

And what about butterscotch Media?

What events are on the horizon for Butterscotch Media?

Yeah, yeah.

So I'm excited that we just did our first episode and Malik, your conversation with Malik was so amazing.

Amazing and we're great, we see such great feedback about that, you know, Malik Malik Corbert is, you know, the founder of Hecaton, and he's doing such amazing work.

So we're excited to relaunch season two with his episode and as, as the audience knows for Butterscotch Media, it's a mix, right?

We do the weekly newsletter.

So for those of you out there listening, I hope you're subscribed to Choose that comes out.

On Monday mornings, but we also do the podcast, which, you know, uh, amazing Witsy is, you know, thank you Wiy for hosting the podcast from time to time.

I step in, as I'll do today, and interview V, and I'm excited that we also do live journalism, you know, our event Trust Media is coming up and as the audience knows, Nic Digital Media is growing and is trusted.

And I wanted to have a conversation about how we are, you know, servicing our audience, sharing information, making sure some pieces of content are not ignored, and we were thrilled to get FinTech TV's Remmy Blair to actually moderate, and I'm so excited to see you'll be there because you've had quite a journey across content creation across FinTech.

And Web 3 and Dei.

So, you know, along with a few other, you know, this Digital Media founders, we're going to be talking about this new terrain and so very excited about that, you know, there's some, there's always so much going on about Discotch Media that, you know, I'm very excited, right?

Yeah, I'm very excited about this conversation.

Please make sure to click the link and register.

It is free and it is virtual.

It should definitely be a great conversation talking about where in the world, as we talked before, where in the world is Cleb?

Where will you be this May?

Yeah, I, I think, you know, when we, when we kicked off season two during Malik's episode, we talked about, you know, consensus and May.

I don't think we had confirmed that you'd be going, so I'm excited that the, you know.

Team will be underground in Miami for consensus, as the audience may know, you know, Coin desk that that hosts consensus, had it in Toronto last year, which didn't land well. cited that it's coming back to the US.

It is typically in Austin, although it, it, it originated, I think in 2017 was the 1st 1, 2016 maybe my first one was 2017.

And that was in New York for the last few years has been in Austin.

So this year it will be in Miami.

So I think we're all excited for consensus to be back on, you know, US soil, to be in Miami.

Hadera is also doing Haderaon.

There's a lot of side events, you know, for the audience, we're looking at the possibility of doing some type of live podcast during consensus.

We did that last year, I think we did.

Sean Colbert was our was our was our guest.

So for the audience stand by.

We'll, we'll let you know about some of the things we have planned for May during consensus.

That's great.

I have to ask you about Real Talk AI.

You've launched this workshop and I've, you know, I've seen a lot of people talking about it on social media and you know, when I asked you about it, you said that you felt it was important to.

Educate people about AI and the intersection of what 3 and AI is so huge.

So tell our audience a bit more about Real Talk AI and what you're doing and what's next.

Thank you so much.

Yes, Real Talk AI comes from coming from the music and entertainment industry and then also being in emerging tech.

So I have these two ends of the spectrum of people saying, no, never AI, especially if it's on The strike negotiations in Hollywood, and then I have folks that use it and trust it as, as, you know, truth, so, and trust it blindly.

So I wanted to make sure to let people know that that's definitely impacts our communities.

So I wanted them to be fully informed and not just be, you know, 46 chat GBT prompts and let them know it's a 3-week virtual workshop where People find out the first week, what it is, what it can't do, a little bit of the history, so they figure out how we got to this point.

Week two, we talk about ethics, copyright, environmental impacts, and also what mass media isn't covering of alternatives that other people are doing globally.

And then week 3 is practical and safe ways to use it.

And of course, in the discussion part, that's about 90 minutes of instruction via storytelling and visuals, and then the last.

Part is we're really learning in community.

So we have founders, uh, creatives, people in 9 to 5 executives learning and commuting and asking these questions.

So, of course, when we talk about AI we talk about what the possibilities are with blockchain.

So it's been really exciting.

We're gonna be definitely holding another one and if you want to, you can sign up on the waitlist at Ritzy Periwinkle.com/realTalkAI.

Wow, I love that you're leading with education.

AI is accessible.

We've been using AI for decades, but we're, we're at this, you know, Gen AI level that is a bit deeper, right, that is more intense, and people hear about, oh, I'm using AI.

I'm using AI, and, and there's nothing wrong with AI.

People shouldn't be scared of AI, but we have, we need some structure, right?

We need some guidance.

So even people who have access to some of these tools, you know, what you're doing provides a framework, right?

The, the workshop brings people to get together where you can share about how are you using, here's how I'm using it, what are some of the, you know, issues, and I feel like that's what why what trust media was about, right?

We butterscotch media, it is great.

You know, the content you've done with your podcast and other, you know, content and your book in the past has been great, but Trust Media was about bringing some of those folks together to talk about what is the future of digital media, how are we impacting it?

And so, you know, I really commend you for thinking about how can you help, as you mentioned, founders.

Heads of, you know, nonprofits, leaders figure out what's what's the best path forward.

So, you know, congratulations, you continue to innovate, you continue to be a leading voice, and for the audience, you know, we'll drop the link in there, you know, we'll talk AI, you know, the, the feedback has been great.

Congrats.

Thank you so much, Clav.

I really appreciate it.

No, thank you for your leadership.

I want to dive right into my conversation with Chung V Lee, who is general counsel at Vida.

She has held senior legal and policy leadership roles across the crypto industry, including as general counsel of Inquish Digital and partner and head of regulatory and policy compliance at Bain Capital's crypto.

Earlier in her career though, she was senior counsel in the enforcement division and chief counsel of the legislative affairs office at the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

She also served on the CFTC Digital Assets Advisory Committee, so she has government and finance experience.

V has also served on boards of multiple blockchain policy associations.

She's.

A graduate of Yale Law School, we mentioned the legal ego, and she frequently speaks and writes about digital finance, and she's also co-host of a weekly podcast focused on the legal space called Decks in the City.

So without further ado, let's get right to it.

The, my butterscotch queen, welcome to season 2 of The Get Down Beyond Bitcoin podcast.

Thank you so much for joining us.

I'm excited to dive into our conversation.

We've known each other for a while, but before we talk about the work you're currently leading, tell us about your journey into crypto.

Our audience loves to hear about how people got into this space and especially those folks like you who got in early.

Yeah, I mean, I didn't get in as early as, you know, some of our, our friends in the industry.

I I've been in for a decade, but how about you?

Yeah, definitely not a decade.

I sort of, so I joined in 2021.

So it's been, I guess, over four years now, and I had kind of an unusual journey into crypto.

So, You know, I started my legal career out just doing traditional securities regulatory law.

I did that for like 8 years at a law firm at JPMorgan.

I clerked for a year in the federal district court in Manhattan and then I ended up at the SEC in 2016.

So I was a lawyer in the enforcement division there.

Around that time the SEC started doing more investigations into crypto.

So during the big ICO boom, if you remember that.

And so I worked on a bunch of those cases, didn't really know anything about crypto and blockchain when I started doing that, but I learned as much as I could about the underlying technology and how these markets worked.

Um, and unlike a lot of my colleagues, I actually thought it was really interesting.

Like, I remember reading Satoshi's white paper for the first time and thinking to myself, this is really neat.

And I read books and listened to podcasts and watched YouTube videos. just to like learn as much as I could.

So fast forward 5 years, I'm no longer in enforcement, but I am kind of at the tail end of my time at the SEC.

This time I'm working as the chief counsel of the legislative affairs office there where I got to do some policy work, right, advising the White House and Treasury and Congress on The technical implementation of draft rules and legislation and affecting the capital markets, including, it was really cool, including some of the earliest draft crypto legislation, like, shout out to, I don't know, Warren Davidson and Cynthia Lummis.

And some of the other, you know, OGs in Congress who've been working on this stuff for years.

So, getting to work on crypto at the SEC still for, but more from a policy angle.

So anyway, I worked for about, you know, my last 6 months was under Gary Gensler actually, and I was starting to think of whether I wanted to stay or not, and I got a call from A16Z who was looking for someone with SEC experience to join their legal team at a company that they had just invested in called WorldCoin.

So if you're not familiar with Worldcoin, It's one of only 2 companies that Sam Altman co-founded.

The other, of course, is OpenAI, and they, they build these devices called orbs that image your eyeballs to generate a unique digital ID for you.

Um, and you get the Worldoin token and crypto wallet for onboarding.

So the idea was twofold, right?

One was to have a way to verify a person's uniqueness and humanness, something that they believe will become really important.

In an age of generative AI and then the second was to onboard as many people onto crypto crypto as quickly as possible.

And so, that mission really resonated with me because they were going to like corners of the earth that, you know, have historically been ignored by every digital and every tech revolution that we've had, you know, communities and populations that have been just shut out.

And so, since then, um, I've had various roles in crypto, in the crypto industry.

I've led legal and policy at a crypto venture capital fund, at a federally regulated crypto bank, and now I'm at a company called Veda where we build something called Vaults, which we think are going to be the critical infrastructure needed for DeFi to scale and to gain mainstream adoption and to reach billions of users.

So that's where I'm at now.

Oh my God, what an impressive and dynamic background.

Obviously, you know, it's wonderful that your expertise spans traditional finance, government, and now crypto, and there's so much to unpack there because one thing I will say, you know, I agree with you on the shout out to Warren Davidson.

He was one of the earliest members of the, you know, congressional.

Blockchain caucus, I think in 2016, 2017, Ron Hammond, who we both know was one of the early folks who, you know, helped him to draft that Taxonomy Act, Senator Loomis, you know, is is more of a newbie.

She was an early Bitcoiner and so by the time she joined, you know, she became a senator, she was willing to go and you know I would say.

You know, it sounds like your journey, right, because you were learning about, you know, blockchain and cryptocurrency before you even came into the space while you were in government.

So I always think of the journey as when you learned about it and went down that rabbit hole and then when you actually starting, started to work substantively on it.

So interesting journey there.

Yeah, it's been a fun ride.

Tell me about some of the professional milestones.

You, you alluded to a few, you know, as you talked about, you know, how you got into crypto.

Have there been things that you are really proud of in this space, the span of time before 2021, where you actually started working in this space during COVID, and even since then?

Yeah, I mean, you know, like I said, I was a traditional financial regulatory lawyer for over a decade before I joined crypto, right?

But like, It turns out that all of that background and experience has been really valuable in giving me a lens into like how markets and systems work and the risks that the regulations are trying to address, right?

And that, that really does inform all of the work that I do, both as a GC at every company I've been at, but also in some of the policy advocacy that I do, right?

You know, Some, some of that relates directly to Veda and what Veda is trying to build, but, you know, I also do just general crypto policy work, push the industry forward.

So, you know, having that kind of deep understanding of traditional markets and market structure, why we have the laws and rules that we do, what risks they're trying to address, what policy objectives they're trying to achieve, right?

That I think that's a really valuable lens through which to view something new.

Like crypto because you, you can see how crypto eliminates or mitigates a lot of those risks, but maybe also introduce some new risks, right?

So you have to think about, you know, what laws make sense given that, right?

And I, I truly believe that you cannot design crypto market structure without having And understanding of traditional market structure.

And so that, that background really informs a lot of my work.

And it's also, you know, it's also why a lot of my writing focuses on how crypto markets are an evolution of traditional markets, right?

And in the ways that it eliminates some of the familiar risks we see by virtue of Of its inherent properties, but also how it poses unique risks that we also have to address, right?

So, you asked about professional milestones that I'm really proud of.

So, you know, for most of my career, I've been in roles where I never really had the opportunity to have like a public voice, you know, and I think crypto changed that.

Like I I was really shy growing up.

Um, and then, you know, being in government, of course, like you're very limited in what you can say publicly and similar, you know, to other roles that I had before I joined crypto, but, you know, I think being in this industry has really given me a chance to have a voice, to share my ideas, and to do more public speaking than like I ever could have imagined, right?

So like in the last 4 years, I've probably done like I don't know.

I want to say north of 70 panels and media appearances and podcasts.

And then now, you know, I have my own podcast with two co-hosts, Dex in the City on Laura Shin's Unchained platform, which has been a really fun platform to have.

Um, and we should have you on some time, Club, by the way.

Um, and then, you know, I do a lot of research and writing, like, both as a part of my job with Veda, but also just on the side, you know, I have free time sometimes, um, and it's just something I really enjoy doing.

So, you know, a lot of the public speaking.

I think tends to be more high level, but my, my writing, I think, is where I really get a chance to shine, right?

To develop my ideas, to convey them with, I think, a lot more nuance, nuance than you can than if you're just on a panel for 30 minutes or something, right?

And you get to reach different audiences and try to bridge divides and To do something that I think or I hope like will contribute to the advancement of the industry.

So one thing I'm really proud of was a paper that I wrote last year with my co-author, Austin Campbell.

It's called Crypto and the Evolution of the Capital Markets.

And what we did in that paper, what we tried to do was to place crypto in the context of, you know, the capital markets have always evolved, right?

Like we Used to literally use paper stock certificates.

We went from that to digitized securities, and now crypto is just the next chapter.

Like, it's not, it's not some scary new thing.

It's actually just a natural evolution that leverages a new technology to improve the way that the markets and the systems work, right?

That's it.

So, I had started writing this paper in 2023.

Um, when I was at Bain Capital Crypto.

So it took me years, um, working on it whenever I had free time here and there in between jobs, and, um, and then we finally put it out, having no idea what people would think, right?

So, that was like a really scary thing.

I had never really done that before, but the reception to it was really, really like, So much more positive than we ever could have imagined.

Like we heard, we heard from so many people on both sides, right?

So like Trad 5 folks told me they'd never really understood the point of crypto or just thought it was like a huge grift.

And this was the first time they read something where it was like, oh, we kind of get it.

And then on the crypto side, people told us, you know, I knew crypto was a more efficient system, but like I truly had no idea how highly intermediated and rent seeking the traditional. capital markets were, and also like why we have all of the regulations that we do, right?

So it was just, it was really nice to kind of help bridge those two worlds.

And one thing that was super cool was we heard from an executive at JPMorgan that she was in Jamie Dimond's office one day, and she saw the paper printed out on his desk.

So like, I don't know if you read it or not, but I was like, oh my God, that's so amazing.

Like my co-author and I were freaking out.

So I would say, yeah, isn't that so funny?

So I would say like that, you know, that's a professional thing I'm really proud of is the writing I do and, you know, we've done like academic papers like that one, but I also do op-eds here and there and think pieces and, you know, people don't always agree with my ideas and, I've been told that my work has been, you know, misinterpreted or maybe not fully understood, but, you know, like, I'm OK with that.

Like I always tell myself, your job is to be clear and direct and hopefully contribute something original or insightful that you think will help push the industry forward and beyond that, you only have so much.

Control over how your ideas are received.

And Austin, who, you know, has been a great friend and mentor, told me something which really stuck with me, which is, you know, if you're controversial and people are talking about you and your ideas, it's because they know you're credible and influential.

Otherwise, they would just ignore you.

You.

So I'm OK with the controversy, and I think debate is healthy and will ultimately lead to better policy outcomes for the industry.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And thought leadership is intended to do that, right, spark debate, present fresh perspective and new ideas, and You know, this, we're at the future frontier, you know, the space is growing, and we need to have a conversation about what this is, and I love, you know, the fact that you want to continue to share ideas and challenges.

Ideas, you know, I often talk about, you know, the fact that we've been digitizing money for a long time and technology has been innovating society for a long time, so blockchain cryptocurrency are just part of that continuum, some not, not anything to be afraid of, and I think you've said it twice.

That's how you've seen this evolution.

It is not spooky or new or.

Quite frankly, not that disruptive because we've been disrupting, you know, technology finance for such a long time.

So I urge our audience to definitely check out the paper.

I'm sure they can get it on SSRN.

Why don't you tell us the name of the paper again?

It's called Crypto and the Evolution of the Capital Markets, and I wrote it with Austin Campbell.

Awesome, awesome, awesome.

That's why I love crypto for folks who really have a lot more to add than what their professional resume says.

Obviously, you are a crypto legal ego, right?

You're an attorney, a general counsel, and I joke that somehow while on our way to Shedding intermediaries, crypto made the profession of attorney sexy.

We have so many attorneys, but they don't do what other attorneys do in other spaces where compliance, our industry led with this conversation about compliance.

So attorneys became very, very important, but how do role beyond just the law, it had a role in terms of understanding regulatory policies and being able to reimagine what a new financial system could be like.

So I want to stay there for a minute because you mentioned the word risk quite a bit.

And crypto is always associated with risk in a in a negative way, but as you talked about risk from your perspective as a regulator in the federal government or even going from traditional finance to decentralized finance, risk is not something people should be afraid of.

Risk is just a part of any new technology, new financial instrument.

Something that we can mitigate.

It's something that we just have to create tools to actually offset and certainly at the rule making and policy level, even at the consumer level.

So I'd love to have you talk a bit about, you know, your work, whether it be you know as a regulator looking at the risk of financial markets that are a natural part of.

The global financial system, or even how you've approached identifying and mitigating risks in the evolution of the web 3 and Dei space.

Yeah, so, you know, my, my view on policymaking is really informed by this book I read years ago in law school.

It's called The Cost of Accidents by Guido Calabrese.

He's like a legend and a former dean of Yale Law School where I went to law school.

So it's about how society weighs the benefits and risks of things and decides how to regulate them and how, like as a society, we implicitly accept.

That there's going to be some risk and some harm, but we accept that in exchange for the benefits that we get from certain things, right?

So, I think, you know, when deciding how to regulate a new technology like crypto, the question shouldn't be, how do you eliminate all risks, right?

That's, that shouldn't be the goal because it's practically, it's impossible.

Possible, but also you would be missing out on a lot of the benefits of it if you did that, right?

So, it's about how do you balance the benefits against the risks, right?

How do you address the risks at the lowest possible cost to the benefits.

So if you think about something like automobiles, for instance, right?

They cause tens of thousands of deaths every year.

They have a real impact on the environment, but we would never ban them because we recognize how beneficial they are in our everyday lives.

Well, maybe not me because I live in New York City, so I walk and take the subway everywhere.

But, you know, in general, right, we recognize that they provide like a big benefit to society.

So what do we do when we have We have seatbelt laws, and we have really strict laws against drunk driving.

We have a minimum driving age.

We require smog checks every year and driver's insurance, right?

We do all of these things that help to mitigate the risks while preserving as much of the benefit as possible, right?

So, that, that's the approach that I take with policymakers and that's, that's the lens through which I View policymaking in general, right, is how do we think about how to address the risks in a way that preserves as much of the benefit of this technology as possible.

And I think, you know, I also take an approach that not everyone in the crypto policy community does, which is, I'm actually very honest about the risks and the trade-offs.

Like I think there can be a tendency to kind of hide the ball a little bit or, you know, look away every time there's some.

Like huge defy exploit or hack or people get harmed, right?

Because we're so focused on just like getting legislation passed or we don't think legislators are smart enough to understand the risks without overreaching or overreacting, right?

I totally get that fear, but Just in my experience doing policy work the last 4 years, like this is not 2019 anymore.

Like I actually think the members and the staff and regulators that I talked to actually understand this stuff pretty well now.

So, you know, I think you can meet them where they are without feeling like you can't be honest about the risks and the trade-offs.

So, I also think, you know, not being upfront about that sort of thing is how you lose credibility over time and frankly, it's how you end up with bad policy.

Like I I actually don't want us to regulate DeFI in a way that ignores the real risks and doesn't take investor and consumer protection really seriously.

Um, you know, I work at a DeFi company, right?

Like we deal with every DeFI protocol out there, we touch everything.

So for me, it's not theoretical.

And I do find that a lot of the policy discussion is very academic and, and almost like ideological, almost like ivory tower in that sense, right?

But that's, that's not where I'm coming from.

Like, I'm on the operating side.

I'm not looking at this from an ideological distance.

So, you know, when something blows up, I'm On the phone with our engineers and our security folks and our partners and our users on, you know, how does this affect us?

Are our users affected?

How do we make sure that this doesn't happen to us, you know, in the future?

Like, how do we protect our users?

So for me, it's very real.

It's not theoretical.

Um, and I actually think our policy work as a community. would be better informed if there were more people with real-world experience building with this technology.

So, you know, I think each of us has to kind of come To this policy work from our own experience and, you know, from our own values, right?

So, I'm a Democrat.

I spent almost 6 years at a regulator.

I care about investor protection.

I care about market integrity, right?

I, I know how real the risks are and, you know, that users will continue to get hurt if we turn our heads the other way as a policy community.

Because we're scared of being overregulated.

So, I think, you know, we need to have an honest conversation about these things.

One that is nuanced and that assumes that policymakers are intelligent and capable of thinking about these things and, and the risks and the trade-offs and the benefits in a nuanced way.

Like, I give them the benefit of the doubt and I find, like I said, that they are smart and receptive.

And that they appreciate that approach.

So, that's kind of how I come at policymaking and, you know, that's not everyone's role in the ecosystem and that's fine.

I think everyone has a part to play, but that's my approach and it's informed by my real world experience working at a regulator and seeking recourse for victims and having a deep understanding of market structure.

Um, and it's informed by the work that I do every day as the GC of a DeFi company.

Well, I love your thoughtful approach to risk because it is something we have to lean in, and I'm sure the audience love the loves the example of, you know, driving a car and the risk to that, you know, I've, I've used that example myself to say that, you know, some would love for people to be able to finally afford a car, but then tell them, don't drive.

Otherwise you're going to die, right?

Exactly.

And of course that is a risk to everyone that you could die if you have a car, but that's why, that's why we tell people you have to have a driver's license.

You have to have insurance, you know, and then we tell them, here's what to do when something happens.

We don't pretend it's not going to happen.

I will defend the industry a bit, you know, I first learned about Bitcoin in 2013, started working full time in the space in 2016.

I do think.

There's such a high bar for crypto, you know, people use the cloud and use technologies and say my stuff is in the cloud, but they have no idea how the cloud operates, who created it.

But because crypto wasn't created by the wrong people, right, we created a cryptocurrency that wasn't created by government or Wall Street, and we created technology that didn't come from Silicon Valley.

So the bar is, oh my God, explain the whole thing before I can trust it while we trust other technologies without understanding anything.

So I think sometimes the industry is just like, OK, let's, you know, the, the high bar on risk for us is just too difficult, makes it too difficult to have the conversation, but I love what you said.

We have to lean into it.

We have to stand on and recognize the harm and And trust that, you know, we've built Web 3 and Dei, you know, as a, you know, transformative and fundamental technology where the benefits exist and we can have the tough conversations and still transcend and you know we haven't gotten a chance to talk about, you know, your, your company, your Dei company Vita, a bit.

So before we start wrapping up, tell us more.

Yeah, oh my gosh.

Um, so, I've been at Veda, I guess for like 9 or 10 months now, and You were saying like cry like crypto made being a lawyer a sexy profession.

So I was like, that's news to me, but, you know, I feel like we're all just like a bunch of nerds that people are forced to listen to because the regulatory environment has been less than ideal, but, you know, I'm joking, but like I, I actually love, I love what I do.

I feel so fortunate to be able to do the work I do, to work in an industry that I believe in.

And to be at a company where I deeply believe in their mission to bring crypto and DeFi to as many people as possible in a way that is responsible.

So if you're not familiar with Vaults, they are non-custodial programmable smart contracts that users deposit their funds into, typically from a self-hosted wallet.

And then the vault deploys those funds into various DFI protocols, things like, um, on-chain lending protocols like AE or liquidity provisioning on a deck like UNIWP, things like that.

And the beauty of it is, is that if you don't want to interact with the DFI protocol directly because you don't have the desire or the ability to manage that, a vault is a really great way to participate in DFI, where it's simple, it's Easy and someone else is sort of managing the risk and optimizing the yields for you.

So, the reason I joined Va as general counsel last year is I have a thesis, which is that the way that most people will access and engage with DeFI in the future is not through direct protocol access, but through a vehicle that abstracts away the complexity of using DeFi in a way that's safe and convenient.

So, The analogy I always make is to the traditional stock market, right?

So actually, I should ask you, do you know what percentage of retail gets exposure to the stock market through day trading?

Oh wow.

No, I don't, but I, I imagine this is not a lot or it is a lot.

It's actually very low, right?

Most people, over 90%, do not get exposure to the stock market through day trading.

They get it through a managed vehicle like a K or an ETF or an index fund, right?

Most people are not sitting in front of their computer all day, day trading stocks.

So, if you think about Out on-chain finance and you believe that all finance will eventually be on chain like I do, my thesis is that it's going to be no different.

We're in the DG phase of DeFi right now, but that's shifting, right?

So, I think vaults are going to become ubiquitous and they will be The main way that most people access on-chain finance of all kinds in the future.

It's no different than the stock market.

So that's what Va does and that's what vaults are.

So like, you know, what do I actually do in my role, right?

So I think the best way to describe my role as general counsel of Veda is that I kind of helped to translate between two worlds that don't naturally understand each other yet, which is, you know, regulation.

And then programmable finance, like, you know, our founders and our engineers that are helping to build and operate this stuff every day.

So, we're, we're building infrastructure that moves and deploys like, gosh, like billions of dollars through smart contracts, right?

So, the legal layer isn't just about risk management.

It's actually about shaping how the product itself is designed.

Make sure that You know, our company can still build and be innovative, but that is also something that institutions and regulators and users can trust, right?

So, I think a lot of GCs describe their jobs as like keeping the company out of trouble.

And yes, I mean, that's part of my job too.

The way that I like to look at it is I see myself as a design partner.

And I think all GCs in crypto should view their role that way.

And what, what's really interesting about being a GC at this particular company is that I get to sit at the intersection of two things that I really care about, right, which is Dei but also user protection, right?

Something that, like we were saying, I don't think gets enough attention in the crypto policy community.

Like, we talk a lot about protecting developers and innovation.

But I find that we almost never discuss how do we design systems that protect users, um, and, and those two things don't have to be opposed, right?

Let's design systems that Preserve the openness and decentralization that are the whole point of crypto, but in a way that minimizes risks to users and preserves market integrity.

So, you know, that's something that I care about a lot.

It informs a lot of the work that I do at Veda and I, I think it's something, you know, that I hope we can discuss just more openly and honestly as a crypto policy community because I really believe that if we're going to succeed, As an industry, users and regulators and institutions really do have to trust these systems and, you know, it has to be something that like, you'd feel safe telling your father-in-law or like your kid's second grade teacher to use.

And right now, I think we're just not there yet.

So, that's a little bit more about the work I do.

I love what you're building and how you see your role as part of the design team for, you know, your company and you're absolutely right, you know, we need more on-ramps to go on chain products to defy.

I, I'm a big supporter of, of self custody.

I, you know, use a ledger for my crypto, but I know it's, it's a hard concept to, to tell people.

Because it's a it it it it, it requires a lot of steps.

So then we often then send them to centralized products and as as Defi grows and we want people to, we want to onboard people to unchain opportunities, we have to create ways for them to do that safely a bit more easily than it is right now and it sounds like that's what you are trying to build with vaults, you know, opportunities for them.

Vault vaults are non-custodial, right?

So it preserves like the ability to self-custody and control your own funds.

And it also, it preserves something that I think is really important, which is we need to preserve the open and permissionless nature of the DI protocols themselves.

Right?

So, it's just a really great way for people who want to be able to get the benefits of DeFi and to engage with DeFi, but maybe don't want to do that directly because it's complicated or intimidating or whatever, right?

Like, I think it's, it's really like, The only way that we are going to get past the, the DeFi DG phase, because there's only so many, so many of those people in the world, like, this is how I think DeFi just really becomes like the financial system, like of the future is if we try to gain that mass adoption.

So, that's why I'm really excited about what we're building there.

Well, I definitely encourage our audience to learn more.

Yeah, I just have a few wrap up questions, but I'm going to try something.

Thank you so much, Chuang V, for joining us.

Audience, we know her as V, but I wanted to actually try to say her full name.

Did I say it correctly?

Yes, you did.

And my mom and dad love you for saying that.

Well, as we wrap up, tell us a fun fact.

Maybe it's your, your, your full name is the fun fact, or anything else you want the audience to know.

Yeah.

Oh my gosh.

So, something I've been doing a lot the last few years is skiing.

So I'm like, I'm obsessed with skiing.

Like, I went 30, I think I skied 30 days this season and 40 days last season.

And what's funny is, I only learned to ski a few years ago.

And For someone who spends as much time skiing as I do, I'm actually not as good as you would think.

And sometimes I wonder if like, I should push myself to conquer like scarier terrain or learn to do jumps or something.

But then I'm like, you know what, I'm perfectly happy going down just like a nice blue run.

With my Bad Bunny playlist and then having the res and the hot tub at the end of the day.

So anyway, that's a fun fact about me and, and also like the point is, is, it turns out you can totally pick up like a cool new sport or hobby even later in life and like, get decently good at it.

So, what decently good 30 runs and the year has barely started, I would say you're approaching, you know, solid expert level here.

Yeah, no, I love doing it.

It's so much fun.

And anything else you want to compel the audience and all to to think about, and also let us, let the audience know how to get in contact with you.

The point I try to make a lot in, you know, a lot of the public speaking and writing that I do is, I just, I want us as a policy community to think more about how do we design systems that users can trust and to care about user safety and user protection.

Um, you know, because I, I really do think that there is a way to balance what makes crypto special, which is open permission decentralized systems with user safety, because I think that is the only way that crypto is going to succeed.

So, that's kind of my, my parting thought.

Well, I know folks can find you on X, on LinkedIn.

Yes, X and LinkedIn, um, yeah, that's the best way.

Awesome, awesome.

Well, I wanna tell, you know, our guests that, you know, this audience has loved this conversation because I have, whenever myself or Isi do these conversations, we always choose guests that have a great story.

That actually are compelling.

So, you know, special thanks to our butterscotch kings and queens out there for joining the conversation.

I hope they get, I got a lot out of it.

And for the audience, be sure to check out all episodes from seasons 1 and 2 on your.

Favorite platform.

Thuangvi, thank you so much for such an amazing conversation, but mostly thank you for the work that you're doing to make sure that the, the country and the world can access digital assets in a safe but also easy manner.

Thanks for having me, Cliff.