Cointelegraph reporter Joseph Hall sat down with Nicolas Cary, the co-founder and president of Blockchain.com at the Paris Blockchain Week Summit, or PBWS, last week. Cary's other roles include founding the Blockchain Commission for Sustainable Development and co-authoring a white paper called "The Future is Decentralised" for the United Nations Development Programme.

Hall and Cary discussed the regulatory landscape of the European Union and the United Kingdom, as well as Cary's optimism for the evolution of money in the Web3 space. Cary recognized the recent "progressive" momentum of policy makers to treat digital assets more seriously in the EU and in the U.S. where President Joe Biden signed an executive order on cryptocurrencies last week.

In the case of the UK, Cary pointed out examples of its pro-innovation stance such as issuing stablecoins, the Royal NFT mint and its "advanced work on the legal status of decentralized autonomous organizations," or DAOs. He said that the UK "could be a real dark horse in Europe," and come out as the unexpected power player when it comes to investment in Web3 and crypto, especially in light of Brexit.

He added that "crypto is intimidating" for policy makers who still need considerable education. But that it shouldn't be surprising that new generations are now collecting digital tokens and showing them off on the internet, similar to how "so many of us grew up" collecting trading cards or Beanie Babies or seashells.

Cary spoke about the main factors he sees affecting the markets, namely high inflation rates. As a consequence, people will find new ways to diversify their wealth. He also claimed that big allocators and institutions are making a meaningful transition into the space at