A leading crypto think tank says the industry must secure protection from Congress now or face aggressive enforcement in the future.
Coin Center Executive Director Peter Van Valkenburgh warns that it has now been seven weeks since Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s testimony, and Congress has yet to vote a market structure bill out of the Senate Banking Committee or pass a version of CLARITY in the Senate.
Without CLARITY, he says the DOJ would continue to prosecute privacy tool developers under 18 USC § 1960 as unlicensed money transmitters.
He says the SEC would also withdraw existing crypto-friendly guidelines, while the Treasury Department and FinCEN would impose broader Bank Secrecy Act rules requiring AML and KYC obligations on decentralized networks.
“There are indeed nihilists in crypto, and if they prevail, we will all end up in crypto hell.
Whether that is by rejecting developer protections in CLARITY and the BRCA in favor of short-term business interests, or by depending on the continued goodwill of executives, that future is bleak.”
Valkenburgh says a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers, including Democrats Ron Wyden and Ritchie Torres, Republicans Tom Emmer, Cynthia Lummis and Warren Davidson, offers a rare opportunity to ensure lasting protections that bind future administrations.
“The purpose of passing on CLARITY is to not trust this government. It is to bind the next one…
We have this moment where their voices can rise above the anti-tech, pro-authoritarian left and right. If we lose this moment because we thought we would have a little more revenue and a little more leeway under the short-term-friendly discretion of the current administration, then we will lose our way.
We are failing to stand up for the kind of transparency, neutrality and openness that crypto stands for. And worse, we will have helped tie the noose ourselves and handed it over to the future officials, who will be only too happy to tighten it.
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