Is Biden Going After Bitcoin?
Cryptocurrency & Blockchain
Last night, all hell broke loose.
Rumors of major coordinated gov attack on crypto.
They’re coming all at once now.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong went public yesterday, raising the alarm over a potential crack-down:
“We’re hearing rumors that the SEC would like to get rid of crypto staking in the U.S. for retail customers.”
Staking is a popular method of verifying transactions on the blockchain in exchange for rewards.
Presumably, the SEC’s vector of attack would be staking rewards – arguing that these constitute expectations of profit from unregistered securities.
Legal precedent is presumably the ancient Howey Test from 1946 – an old fossil of a securities law that’s practically written with feather on crumbling parchment.
Staking has become vital to the crypto ecosystem, and the SEC has not officially commented as of yet.
But wait! That’s not all folks…
Nic Carter just published a comprehensive report on the Biden Administration’s “Operation Choke Point.”
The idea being that there’s a covert effort under foot to cut crypto off at the knees and sever service providers from the legacy fiat banking rails.
For example, Binance has been forced to halt all USD withdrawals as of yesterday, and is now scrambling to find new banking partners.
This could just be the beginning.
It’s interesting to note that this attack comes on the heels of the midterm elections, which are now safely in the rearview mirror.
After all, with 1 in 4 Americans owning crypto, you wouldn’t want this turning into a politically controversial issue at such an inopportune time, right?
So let’s see…
What would happen if there really is a coordinated effort to ban staking in the US and to cut crypto off from the dollar system?
Of course, this is a BIG “if”.
Remember, despite focusing its entire firepower on a single, small coin, the SEC spectacularly failed in court to label Ripple as a security, and instead resigned itself to winning a rather humiliating catfight with Kim Kardashian.
And winning these court cases is the easy part.
Cutting every major service provider from the dollar clearing system is 10 times more difficult.
But what if it really does work?
What if regulation by arbitrary enforcement and cowardly acts of political sabotage manage to disembowel the domestic crypto economy?
We’ll, it’ll just drive everything offshore.
You can’t stop code.
In the words of Alan Moore:
“Behind this mask there is more than just flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea… and ideas are bulletproof.”
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Transitioned from TradFi to crypto in 2021, joining Coinbase’s new Prime Broker desk for institutional clients. Help clients gain a foothold in the digital asset space and provide education with a LinkedIn following of 4K and over 1.5M content views.
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