“The US is at a very important crossroads with crypto today,” says Coinbase Co-founder Fred Ehrsam, who is also the co-founder of crypto investment firm Paradigm.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Ehrsam talked about the regulation of cryptocurrency as more and more regulators are getting vocal about regulating the crypto space.

“The US is blessed with the best currency and the world's reserve currency today,” and it also tends to be the de facto financial regulator for a whole bunch of the world, he said, noting that most of the highly valuable companies in the world are American Internet technology companies.

“I do think that crypto is a nuanced issue and that it's possible the US gets crypto wrong.”

While regulators' job is to mitigate risk and keep investors safe, at the same time, “crypto is the next Internet sized opportunity for the United States.”

According to him, crypto has the “potential to create as many if not more jobs than the Internet,” the same as economic growth.

Cryptocurrencies can actually help with the privacy internet issues as seen with big tech companies in the past decade, according to Ehrsam.

These technologies can be used to “continue to own our own data while still getting all the benefits of the Internet platforms we know and love,” he added.

Ehrsam further noted that China is already taking a stand on crypto, “for better or for worse.” On being asked if he has concerns that China is going to beat the US in crypto and if that's kind of a big deal, Ehrsam said: “Candidly yes.. and it's on multiple fronts…”

One front is government programs explicitly built using crypto, which is true both with their CBDC initiative, which is basically making a digital renminbi, and also true of local governments who are trying to use blockchain technology, he said.

Furthermore, most of the crypto mining is happening in China. But the recent crackdown on mining in the country is “actually a huge moment of opportunity today for miners in the United States or globally to step in and on the crypto side to make it more decentralized,” Ehrsam added.

During the same interview, Ehrsam advised new crypto adopters not to allocate more than what they are comfortable losing. “Perhaps it makes sense to allocate more but error on the conservative side when you're allocating it first,” he said.

“It's still very early and as the fundamentals improve over time conviction improves over time.”

He further advised focusing on technology in terms of where this is going and why it is important in the world. Also, “think about it on a fundamental basis,” because “if you have that belief, then it probably makes sense to own something in space. And if that belief grows, then you can always increase it.”

Lastly, Ehrsam said things are never as good as they seem, and things are never as bad as they seem, so think of a 10 to 20-year time horizon.

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