2021-04-19
Regulation
- Warn that US crypto regulation is coming this year, likely folded into a tax bill as consumer protection, since no government lets a trillion-dollar industry stay in a gray area.
- Blame the urgency on Dogecoin and NFT excesses that look Ponzi-like, expecting SEC chair Gary Gensler to target DeFi first.
- Explain Cardano's answer: an unregulated base layer plus a compliance toolbox of Prism DIDs, KYC and AML, flexible governance, and metadata for regulated activity.
- Fault the industry for underspending on lobbying while legacy finance spends billions, urging viewers to contact Congress.
- Insist crypto survives regardless, pointing to XRP still trading through Ripple's lawsuit, while bad rules would only leave America behind.
35 entries
Opens April 19th 2021 from Colorado saying regulation is coming like winter in Game of Thrones, reading a Fox Business tweet by Charlie Gasparino that the Biden administration is developing a crypto regulatory approach, SEC enforcement, and a possible Bitcoin ETF.
Argues no regulation-friendly US government will let a trillion-dollar industry stay in a gray enforcement area, and only five to six years of Washington political molasses delayed it.
A different Republican president in 2016 would already have regulated, Trump was an anomaly, whereas Biden is a 50-year creature of Washington who knows how to pass legislation systematically.
Predicts after the roughly 2 trillion dollar infrastructure bill passes with a 25 percent corporate tax, individual tax increases come next, likely folding crypto regulation in as a consumer protection package like the Green New Deal was folded into infrastructure.
The urgency comes from the NFT revolution and Dogecoin's rise creating a Ponzi-like perception, where a copy of a copy of a copy gets a 5 billion dollar valuation and retail buys hoping the next group pays more.
Attacks Dogecoin where 94 percent of supply is held by the top 1 percent, over 4000 dollars printed every minute, 2.2 billion a year of persistent linear inflation, with no team, no utility, and no vision beyond pushing it to a dollar.
Regulators feel a moral duty when they see such patterns, as with GameStop, and have only held off while working through covid relief, infrastructure, and tax reform, now able to run on party lines thanks to Georgia's two Democratic senators.
New SEC chairman Gary Gensler has a proactive enforcement history from the CFTC and taught a cryptocurrency class at MIT, so DeFi could be the first target alongside FinCEN and the Treasury since DeFi stands in for regulated market organs.
Generalizes that Republicans are more hands-off and libertarian while the left distrusts the free market, though Democrats under Clinton repealed Glass-Steagall and financial regulation occurred under the Bushes.
The progressive government in power listens to Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and if Elon Musk were seen dumping Dogecoin on poor kids, that inequality narrative would be the catalyst to bring in a regulator, even on perception alone.
A political monopoly means no filibuster or counterparty, and the prior party that produced Jay Clayton and bitcoin-is-a-bad-deal statements was not pro-crypto either, so a legislative crypto mandate in 2021 is inconceivable not to attempt.
Concedes regulation could bring first-ever US clarity on asset classification, utility tokens, securities law, and registration, but is skeptical, recalling how BitLicense made New York one of the worst places to run a crypto business.
Cardano was built flexibly as a global financial operating system for users from Canada, Germany, China, Senegal, or Ethiopia, so an unregulated base layer carries a philosophy while regulated activity gets an escalation toolbox.
Regulated activity is why the Prism identity system, the DID standards process, and KYC and AML scaling were built, so a dapp or transaction can integrate DIDs upgraded by a KYC entity like a bank, exchange, or Accuant.
Verified DIDs can be encrypted privately or kept transparent and used to sign transactions, metadata payloads, and addresses, enabling regulated DeFi like a DEX where funds come only from authenticated or whitelisted addresses.
The flexible governance system focused on ADA today will let any native token get its own voting system, so you get decentralization and a DAO on day one, and the metadata standard live since December embeds contract hashes and off-chain pointers to assist regulatory escalation.
Regulatory clarity would give him business and technical requirements for future Cardano editions and he believes they can comply creatively while preserving privacy and autonomy, warning the worst case is a centralized system where a regulated institution controls your money, which they will lobby against.
Laments that despite billions earned, crypto entities spend little lobbying against bad legislation unlike legacy finance's billions, noting the Treasury secretary received 7.1 million dollars from industry after leaving the Fed, and urges US viewers to contact Congress.
Stresses regulation is not unprovoked given real market manipulation, unstable exchanges, and NFT inside-bidding where people bid among themselves to inflate prices, the behavior of an unregulated financial market.
Draws the historical parallel of the 19th-century baronial age leading to the 1907 Knickerbocker crisis, then the 1929 collapse, then the creation of the SEC in 1933, warning the regulatory pendulum swings too far the other way.
Expects a rocky next 6 to 12 months with clarity coming and assets viewed differently in 2022 and 2023, no way to negotiate under a political monopoly, while crypto survives as shown by XRP still trading billions despite Ripple's SEC lawsuit.
Bitcoin, ten times larger, would keep functioning under bad regulation, which only makes his life as a US entrepreneur harder and leaves America on the sidelines watching other countries exceed.
Bad US regulation is why they are committed to Africa, where laws are changing, capital controls are falling, and DeFi is welcomed, dreading having to offshore and wall off the United States because old people regulated an industry they do not understand.
Vows to keep calling out bad behavior, recalling ADA was delisted for a long time because he confronted exchange leaders over listing BitConnect, which he calls immoral, and stands by it.
It is unrealistic for copy-of-a-copy projects to wake up worth billions from clueless retail chasing avarice, yet the real players stay, Bitcoin will not die though its mining is an environmental catastrophe they spend millions researching past, and Ethereum will not go away.
Layer-2 and dapp excesses have been counterproductive, adding an asterisk to his most popular video ever on Doge with 167000 views in three days, clarifying it is not about a coin rising but about 94 percent held by a few who can dump into a meme-buying crowd.
Warns losers will demand refunds or retribution, and that a few billionaires manipulating markets is all it takes to pass dangerous regulation for a let-no-crisis-go-to-waste administration comfortable with market control.
Asks about proper crypto use, recalling his old Bitcoin course that taught secure self-custody amid Mt. Gox insolvency, noting most people leave coins on exchanges and cloud wallets and will blame crypto, not themselves, if an entity goes belly up.
Power-seekers use bad outcomes to gain oversight they never return, like the Patriot Act pitched as temporary after 9/11 but preserved and enhanced 20 years later even after Snowden, and new agencies breed a corpus of law and special interests.
Tax law stays complex because tax attorneys and H&R Block lobby against simplification, and onerous regulation favors incumbents who already comply while blocking startups, a regulatory barrier to entry.
The industry was built by someone afraid of government who stayed anonymous, since Liberty Dollar and other private-currency creators went to jail, so you should not hand regulators the ammunition they publicly say they will use.
Laments his life's work feels jaded though he believes the technology changes the world, imagining NFTs where an artist routes a share of every future resale to a cause they cared about like clean water in Africa or women in technology.
Calls the protocol a financial stem cell where the same smart contract that automates tax compliance handles perpetual copyleft royalties and a billion other uses, yet the dialogue is Shiba Inu, when-moon, and when-lambo while lumber is up 117 percent.
The world financial system is sick with negative interest rates in Europe and democracies carrying debt over 200 percent of GDP, money printed while inflation is denied, so short-term avarice sidelines the real use cases of fair transparent marketplaces and contracts that cannot lie.
Closes that regulation is coming in 2021 and the industry should rally, that US regulation will not kill crypto but only harm America and its economy, and that calling out Elon Musk gained him nothing yet he follows his conscience.