A group of crypto and blockchain firms joined together to create a Texas crypto advocacy group, according to a Sept. 11 announcement. The group is called “Crypto Freedom Alliance of Texas,” and is founded by a16z crypto, Coinbase, Ledger, Bain Capital Crypto, Blockchain Capital, and Paradigm. The group is promoting “the development of coherent and predictable regulations for digital assets in Texas.”
To further its goals, the Crypto Freedom Alliance will foster educational initiatives that will target government officials, corporations, non-profits, and other organizations in an effort to highlight the value of Web3 in the state of Texas, the announcement stated.
Cointelegraph met up with a16z crypto’s global head of policy, Brian Quintenz, at the Permissionless II conference in Austin to get further details on the new group. According to Quintenz, Texas is uniquely suited to become a haven for Web3 developers, but this necessitates forming an advocacy group to tackle issues in the state.
For example, Quintenz argued that decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) often need legal jurisdiction to operate. Texas is an attractive state, thanks to its adoption of the Uniform Code of Unincorporated Associations.
“Modifying the unincorporated association law that applies more generally to limited liability types of entities is a state issue, and there are only a few states that have adopted the Uniform Code of Unincorporated Associations […] Texas is one of them,” Quintenz stated.
However, small changes would need to be made to this code to allow DAOs to be recognized as legal entities:
“One of the things we continue to try to do is to advocate and educate around creating a legal entity for DAOs that makes some changes to the unincorporated association framework but makes it more restrictive. We don’t want to just open it up to anybody and say ‘Oh, I’m a DAO.’ You can only really qualify for this if you’re a decentralized kind of organization.”
In addition to advocating for changes to the unincorporated association laws, Quintenz said the group would also push for crypto-friendly tax laws, bank charter laws and bank regulations. He considered Wyoming’s bank charter laws to be “a positive example” of what can be accomplished by crypto-friendly legislatures.
Safeguarding minister Jess Phillips has told Sky News that councils that believe they don’t have a problem with grooming gangs are “idiots” – as she denied Elon Musk influenced the decision to have a national inquiry on the subject.
The minister said: “I don’t follow Elon Musk’s advice on anything although maybe I too would like to go to Mars.
“Before anyone even knew Elon Musk’s name, I was working with the victims of these crimes.”
Mr Musk, then a close aide of US President Donald Trump, sparked a significant political row with his comments – with the Conservative Party and Reform UK calling for a new public inquiry into grooming gangs.
At the time, Ms Phillips denied a request for a public inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham on the basis that it should be done at a local level.
But the government announced a national inquiry after Baroness Casey’s rapid audit on grooming gangs, which was published in June.
Asked if she thought there was, in the words of Baroness Casey, “over representation” among suspects of Asian and Pakistani men, Ms Phillips replied: “My own experience of working with many young girls in my area – yes there is a problem. There are different parts of the country where the problem will look different, organised crime has different flavours across the board.
“But I have to look at the evidence… and the government reacts to the evidence.”
Ms Phillips also said the home secretary has written to all police chiefs telling them that data collection on ethnicity “has to change”, to ensure that it is always recorded, promising “we will legislate to change the way this [collection] is done if necessary”.
Operation Beaconport has since been established, led by the National Crime Agency (NCA), and will be reviewing more than 1,200 closed cases of child sexual exploitation.
Ms Phillips revealed that at least “five, six” councils have asked to be a part of the national review – and denounced councils that believed they don’t have a problem with grooming gangs as “idiots”.
“I don’t want [the inquiry] just to go over places that have already had inquiries and find things the Casey had already identified,” she said.
She confirmed that a shortlist for a chair has been drawn up, and she expects the inquiry to be finished within three years.
Ms Phillips’s comments come after she announced £426,000 of funding to roll out artificial intelligence tools across all 43 police forces in England and Wales to speed up investigations into modern slavery, child sex abuse and county lines gangs.
Some 13 forces have access to the AI apps, which the Home Office says have saved more than £20m and 16,000 hours for investigators.
The apps can translate large amounts of text in foreign languages and analyse data to find relationships between suspects.
With a sentencing hearing scheduled in a matter of weeks, Roman Storm is potentially looking at five years in jail for running an unlicensed money transmitting service.