Earlier this month the Terrorism and Illicit Finance Subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing to assess the national security implications of open blockchain networks like Bitcoin. Coin Center testified to explain how the technology works and stress that policymakers must approach them the same way they do the internet–as a purpose agnostic platform that is rich with innovative potential.

Yesterday Coin Center continued its Congressional education efforts by holding a demonstration day event for members of Congress on the full committee and their staff. We partnered with Xapo, Chainalysis, and Elliptic to showcase how a typical user would interact with the Bitcoin network. The demonstration covered the process of setting up a software wallet (BitPay’s Copay) and a hosted wallet (highlighting the important distinctions between the two), the stringent AML/KYC process needed to create an account on a regulated exchange, sending a transaction, and viewing transactions on the publicly available Bitcoin blockchain.