Explain yourself! That was the message many crypto enthusiasts shot back at Sam Bankman-Fried on Wednesday night after the FTX co-founder and CEO published a 3,700-word novella putting forth his view on crypto regulations. Among other things, Bankman-Fried suggested that decentralized finance blockchain protocols ought to have at least some interface with traditional financial regulators, even if the underlying software remains open source. That proposal seemed to ruffle a few feathers. Some of crypto’s loudest proponents declared those regulations would undo the decentralization the sector is fighting so hard for. And while Bankman-Fried clarified his stance and said he would offer a few edits, his overarching message was this: For decentralized finance to get any sort of mainstream adoption at all, it will have to find at least some way to cooperate with regulators. Bankman-Fried's view is in effect the grownup-in-the-room approach to blockchain. Crypto-native developers may not like it, but few institutional investors (pension plans, for example) will come close to touching decentralized finance until there is clarity around not only what rules it needs to follow, but also who is setting them in the first place. To some extent, Bankman-Fried is just being realistic. There is, of course, a bit of irony to him speaking out about how the sector needs more rules. Texas regulators are investigating one of his own exchanges, FTX US, for not properly registering with them in the first place (the company has said it has a pending license and believes it is “operating fully within the bounds of what we can do in the interim.”)