Arguably the most important person in D.C., Elizabeth Warren, was described by Politico in 2021 as the kingmaker in the Biden administration.
So what did Warren's allies in the Biden administration do when they were in power?
• through the SEC and IRS, they designated DeFi code publishers as "financial brokerages," severely curtailing the right to publish open source code, and imposing impossible regulations on projects that are not custodying any funds and are not running any application code (source: https://sec.gov/files/rules/proposed/2023/34-97309.pdf and https://thedefiant.io/news/research-and-opinion/the-proposed...)
• sought to imprison open source developers (source: https://decrypt.co/303290/paradigm-eff-tornado-cashs-roman-s...)
• subjected Americans, through the ban on Tornado Cash, to having all of their onchain activity monitored, without a warrant
• Operation Chokepoint 2.0, where they illegally deployed regulatory agencies to coerce banks to close the bank accounts of U.S. citizens who participated in the crypto industry
What does this "industry" make? The only products I read about are scams, theft from exchanges, payments for criminal dealings, etc.
There's lot's of moaning about "freedom from financial oppression" but also wild screams of jubilation when one of the "financial oppressors" starts trading or indexing crypto. Which one is it?
> So what did Warren's allies in the Biden administration do when they were in power?... etc
I don't really follow the legislative mess around crypto because nobody in power has defined what crypto is - without that, it's bound to be a mess. The question is, was the Biden admin too soft or too hard on crypto? I don't think you'll like the science-backed answer.
The same thing the internet "made" in 1995: permissionless infrastructure. You can dislike individual use cases, but you're missing the forest for the trees. The base layer of the crypto ecosystem is a decentralized transaction protocol that allows anyone to send verifiable, uncensorable data, including payments, without relying on trusted intermediaries. That's a breakthrough.
> The only products I read about are scams, theft... etc.
That says more about your reading list than the technology. Stablecoins are now the primary cross-border payment rail in dozens of countries. ETH secures billions in programmable contracts, used for everything from microloans to insurance to remittances. Even JPMorgan and BlackRock are tokenizing assets. Scams exist, as they do in every new technological frontier, but that's just the noise in terms of the big picture.
>There's lot's of moaning about "freedom from financial oppression" but also wild screams of jubilation when one of the "financial oppressors" starts trading or indexing crypto. Which one is it?
It's like opposing censorship while being glad when mainstream publishers adopt free speech norms. Crypto isn't anti-institution, it's anti-coercion. When financial giants choose to participate, that’s a win for the principle of neutrality and open access.
> I don't really follow the legislative mess...
That’s part of the problem. You admit you’re not informed, yet dismiss the documented abuses: warrantless financial surveillance, censorship of code, legal harassment of developers, and backdoor pressure campaigns against lawful businesses.
You don’t need to love crypto. But ignoring the suppression of basic rights in the name of tribalistic dislike for an industry is how authoritarianism creeps in. If crypto buying influence in DC prevents that, maybe it’s not the worst thing.
Guid_NewGuid•6mo ago
As usual this heavily leans towards one party and the situation would be 'less bad' with the other party but as usual the problem is money in politics and Citizens United. At least watching the collapse of your state from abroad provides entertaining reading.
[0]: https://apnews.com/article/democrats-crypto-genius-act-stabl...