ETHDenver Address (Feb. 20, 2026)
Thank you for the opportunity to join you today. As Colorado’s Attorney General and a part of Colorado’s entrepreneurial ecosystem for over 25 years, I am proud that ETHDenver is now an institution and Colorado is a center for innovation in cryptocurrency, stablecoins, and other emerging technologies. In my talk today, I want to discuss what makes Colorado special as an innovation center and how public policy should approach emerging technologies.
I. Colorado’s Entrepreneurial Culture
Just recently, a survey (opens new tab) placed Colorado as the most entrepreneurial state in the United States. I recognize that there are lots of such surveys and I suspect even prediction markets on the topic, with other states making the case for what makes them special. But I actually believe Colorado’s strongest asset is one that does not come up in surveys—a culture of “give first,” where entrepreneurs here ask “how can I help?” Let me begin with some background on that cultural norm.
I first engaged with the Boulder entrepreneurial community in the early 2000s as the dot-com bubble was popping. At that time, it was clear to me—as it still is—that Colorado has a special culture around supporting startups and encouraging entrepreneurs to build great companies here. For me, as a new professor at the University of Colorado, it was clear that we needed to support this work. That was a core part of why I founded Silicon Flatirons, a Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship.
At Silicon Flatirons, we developed a three-part mission. First, we were committed to intellectually rigorous and honest conversations about technology policy. The core concept—and that’s evident here at ETHDenver—is to bring together leaders from different backgrounds and really listen to their ideas, encouraging a culture of interdisciplinary problem solving. Second, we were committed to supporting students—part of my lifetime commitment to mentoring. Finally, we supported the local entrepreneurial community.
Our support of the entrepreneurial community at Silicon Flatirons included a New Venture Challenge on campus, hosting the local Boulder New Tech Meetup, convening initiatives like the Entrepreneurs Unplugged series, and more. In later years, and in collaboration with my friend Brad Feld, I co-founded the Innovation Council during Governor Ritter’s administration, Startup Colorado, and the now-Bridge Entrepreneurs Network, or BEN. In short, we brought an innovative attitude to how we could best meet the needs of the community—and I am proud to say that most of the initiatives mentioned are still going. I am also proud to say that I was never afraid to start new efforts that might fail.
I recognize that Colorado cannot be complacent if we want to attract and support entrepreneurs who are developing innovative companies, advancing emerging technologies, and making life better by providing new products and services. And that’s an opportunity offered by cryptocurrency and blockchain. Before getting into some of the emerging public policy issues, let me talk a bit about emerging technologies and disruptive innovation.
II. Emerging Technologies and Their Critics
Most emerging technologies threaten existing business models. When MCI first marketed itself as a competitor to AT&T, AT&T fought back against MCI and sought to ban its rival service. Thankfully, that effort failed. Reflecting that page of the incumbent’s playbook, the late Judge Steve Williams once remarked at a Silicon Flatirons conference that “entrants are regulated because incumbents want it that way.” The Internet, as we all know, provided one of the most formidable threats to established companies, changing the way we trade stocks, book our travel, and communicate, fueling competition and saving consumers billions in the process.
When cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies were emerging, a venture capital friend of mine, Brad Burnham, highlighted that the original promise of the Internet—a technology platform with an open architecture—was even more true about blockchain. As I understand it, blockchain provides an open platform where companies can build new products and services that can be examined and operate transparently. And, significantly, the open platform is not one that can be hijacked by individual companies, meaning that blockchain will enable continued open and fair competition. Put differently, blockchain is a technology that uniquely enables competition and innovation.
With respect to promoting competition, I should add that my policy commitment is not only to promote innovation through entrepreneurship, but also to promote responsible competition through new entry and new entrants. Take, for example, the case of credit cards. One of my first jobs as a lawyer was at the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. In that job, one of my assignments was to work on a case investigating Visa and Mastercard for shutting out credit card rivals by locking out the commercial banks as distribution channels. That case was eventually successful. In my second tour of duty at the DOJ, I worked on a different case involving credit cards; in this case, the Department went after so-called “anti-steering fees” that prevented merchants from encouraging customers to use forms of payment other than credit cards. In a most unfortunate Supreme Court decision, however, the lower court ruling banning such practices was overturned.
The dominance of major credit card networks means that the interchange fees charged to merchants have continued to rise. But one important application of cryptocurrency is stablecoins, tokens pegged 1:1 to the dollar. These stablecoins, as a payment alternative to credit cards, promise a new form of competition where consumers can pay, using their smartphones, for example, with them and thereby avoid the existing credit card networks and their interchange fees. As someone committed to supporting innovation and competition, that promise piques my interest.
With respect to blockchain, I am similarly interested in how state governments, such as California, are starting to move away from the legacy of recording title transfers using paper records and do so more efficiently using blockchain technology. And it’s moving well past pilot projects, too; in California, an estimated (opens new tab) 42 million DMV car titles are on now on the Avalanche blockchain, with the goal of fighting fraud. In principle, this innovation can provide for instant verification, reduced fraud, and potential cost savings. For Colorado, a state that prioritizes innovation, we need to be exploring such opportunities in a range of contexts.
III. Public Policy Questions
One important question for Colorado is how we can show our commitment to innovation in terms of the public policies we adopt and support. In the case of cryptocurrency, for example, allowing people the option to securely and safely pay for government services—and their taxes—using Bitcoin and of course Eth is a step in that direction. Similarly, we must ensure we are enabling companies developing these technologies to be headquartered here in Colorado. While the traditional organization is hierarchical, reflecting a command-and-control structure, a cooperative or a DAO is decentralized and more networked. The idea of cooperative ownership structures is hardly new, as Colorado and many states have cooperatives in place to provide energy or other services, but the rise of blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies has sparked a resurgence of this model of ownership.
At the federal level, it is important that we develop stable regulatory structures to allow for blockchain and cryptocurrency to operate responsibly. For years during the Biden Administration, the request for such regulatory clarity was ignored, as the Securities and Exchange Commission engaged in only enforcement activities that left many companies frustrated by the lack of a clear framework to provide before-the-fact guidance. As one critic of the SEC put it (opens new tab), “The SEC’s ad-hoc enforcement actions—targeting some cryptocurrencies and exchanges while overlooking others without clear justification—foster[ed] confusion and erode[d] confidence in the regulatory process.” This approach was a mistake.
Going forward, it will be important to develop clear rules of the road that enable entrepreneurs to develop new companies while protecting investors and consumers. It will be important, moreover, as we consider the appropriate rules for licensing and for those businesses engaged in money transmission not to impose unnecessary or overly burdensome obligations. After all, one of the points made at those Silicon Flatirons conferences was that too often entrants are subject to regulation because incumbent firms want it that way.
As we consider new regulations, it is important that we engage in an ongoing dialogue with those subject to regulation to ensure we approach the topic thoughtfully. This is exactly what our department did when we developed and implemented the Colorado Privacy Act. In that context, for example, we were careful to set a relatively high bar—with rules applying only to entities that process the personal data of more than 100,000 individuals—so that regulatory obligations did not kick in for startups, and we developed adaptable principles rather than prescriptive requirements.[1]
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I appreciate the opportunity to visit with you today. The development of cryptocurrency and blockchain companies in Colorado is important to our future and our status as a technology hub. As you all build your businesses, I want to hear from you—what is working, what are your pain points, and how do we protect our entrepreneurial ecosystem as one of the best in the nation. With respect to the public policy issues facing cryptocurrency and blockchain, I promise to always listen carefully and analyze such issues through the lens we celebrated at Silicon Flatirons. And with respect to adopting emerging technologies in Colorado state government, I will be a champion for how we experiment, work to improve how government functions, and be a nationwide leader.
Thanks for your time and I would welcome your thoughts, questions, and
[1] Colorado Department of Law, Colorado Privacy Act (CPA), https://coag.gov/resources/colorado-privacy-act/; Attorney General Phil Weiser, Prepared remarks: Artificial Intelligence Symposium (Sept. 30, 2025), https://coag.gov/blog-post/attorney-general-phil-weiser-prepared-remarks-artificial-intelligence-symposium-9-30-2025/ (discussing the Department of Law’s approach to Colorado Privacy Act rulemaking).