Sheila Warren, Former World Economic Forum Exec, Tapped as Crypto Council for Innovation’s New CEO

Sheila Warren, a former executive at the World Economic Forum, has been tapped to join the Crypto Council for Innovation as its CEO. The crypto lobby group hopes to shape crypto policy in the United States.

Warren Set to Lead Council

The blockchain and Web3 space has faced growing attention from lawmakers in the U.S. recently, and so crypto lobbying efforts like the Crypto Council for Innovation seem increasingly warranted. 

A past executive of the World Economic Forum, Sheila Warren, will join the crypto lobbying group Crypto Council for Innovation as its CEO starting on Feb. 2. In addition to her role on the executive committee, she also worked as the World Economic Forum’s head of data, blockchain, and digital assets.

The Crypto Council for Innovation was founded in April of last year, and its prominent member organizations include Fidelity, Coinbase, Block, and venture capital firms Paradigm, Ribbit Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz. 

Warren called the present moment “critical” for the crypto ecosystem, emphasizing the importance of the next two years for the digital assets space.

The World Economic Forum is a non-profit foundation headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland that was founded in 1971. It bills itself as the “International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation” and asserts that organizations should consider all stakeholders from all parts of society. 

Warren saw last year’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, which had tax language potentially problematic to the crypto space, as a “massive wake up call to a lot of people.” She also highlighted the importance of the Biden administration’s coming executive order forcing government bodies to propose crypto regulation. 

Additionally, the SEC proposed last week an expansion of its definition of “securities,” which could negatively impact decentralized finance exchanges. Concerns were also raised last week about a provision to the America COMPETES Act that could give the Treasury power to wantonly prohibit transactions, possibly including crypto transactions. Last December, Senators scrutinized stablecoins and this month, Congress held a hearing examining the environmental impact of crypto mining. Finally, the Federal Reserve released its report on central bank digital currencies on Jan. 20.

Many bodies have been getting involved in oversight of the industry, and so crypto lobbying groups like the Crypto Council for Innovation, as well as the political action committee dubbed the GMI PAC that was announced last Friday, which seeks to fund candidates in the coming November midterm elections to the tune of $20 million, are increasingly relevant. 

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned BTC, ETH, and several other cryptocurrencies.