Consumers’ Research Publishes Bretton Woods Blockchain Paper

Consumers' Research has published a new white paper months after organizing a meeting of legislators, regulators and blockchain entrepreneurs at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire.

Held in July under Chatham House rules, the event drew attendees from the US Department of Commerce, the Federal Trade Commission and the National Institute of Standards and Technology as well as groups like the MIT Media Lab and Coin Center. Also taking part were US Representatives Mick Mulvaney and David Schweikert.

The goal of the event was to produce a framework focused on consumer protection, with an eye to bridge the concerns of regulators and lawmakers with the ambitions of entrepreneurs working in the digital currency and blockchain space.

The result: a white paper detailing “guiding principles on consumer protection best practices” that emerged from those discussions. Consumers’ Research also published a draft bill of consumers’ rights, which includes a call for free access at any time to funds held by third parties.

CR executive director Joe Colangelo explained to CoinDesk:

“You have a right to work with a website, to demand security, to demand privacy. We enumerated on those and if you’re a business, we didn’t want to go too into the weeds. We wanted to have guiding principles.”

From here, the organization plans to solicit input from industry stakeholders, regulatory bodies and mainstream financial institutions. The hope, according to Colangelo, is to “tear apart our definitions and suggestions” in order to build the strongest framework possible.

“We’re really focused on making this into a self-regulatory effort,” he said.

The full white paper can be found below:

Protecting Consumers in the Digital Currency Economy by CoinDesk on Scribd

Image by Pete Rizzo for CoinDesk