Topic: Crypto lobbying is going ballistic (Read 121 times)
Business as usual in the USA plutocracy. Once an industry, sector or company becomes significant enough, the need to create competitive advantages, fooling the public, spreading biased arguments (weapons, tobacco, pharma, sugar,... you name it) becomes a necessity and lobbying is just another cost of doing business. I guess this is yet another sign of maturity in crypto, growing pains if you will. It must not be that easy to create a full new asset class in which to throw the rich and no that rich investors wealth.
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i think crypto is going to win in the end though.
Yes of course. It was already stated by the IMF boss some years ago when she advised them to think about joining the crypto ecosystem before some Central banks took the step of creating their own CBDC. Meanwhile, they understand cryptocurrency is inevitable that's the reason why they are doing everything they can to make people feel bad about but the Covid-19 and World economic meltdown show the main reason behind crypto creation to the world.they will have to win the hearts of the crypto community to be able to win a race.
Which is impossible for the achieve, the last time I checked crypto community bond to cryptocurrency much stronger, and crypto is the only currency that bonds people around the world together without the act of discrimination, etc. 
i think crypto is going to win in the end though. there are just more believers today than what it was before 2017. if the crypto firms are hiring lobbyists to win, the politicians who hold cryptocurrencies i think should also stand up this time because we are back in time when the Demo is trying to win the African American's vote as Patrick Patrick David said.
politicians today have to be very careful speaking against crypto or they will have to win the hearts of the crypto community to be able to win a race.
politicians today have to be very careful speaking against crypto or they will have to win the hearts of the crypto community to be able to win a race.
I think this has already eliminated several candidates from ever taking the big stage. Some of them have ignorantly spoken about bitcoin and ended up making themselves look foolish. However, then there is the other side, if a politician seems too pro-crypto they will almost certainly catch heat from environmentalists.
We will see a lot more politicians in the future tiptoeing around crypto related topics, choosing their words very carefully.
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Based on public disclosures The Economist calculates that crypto firms spent around $5m lobbying the American Senate in the first nine months of 2021. About $2.5m of that was spent between July and September—a quadrupling over the same period last year.
Ugh. That's not nearly enough to gain any sort of influence with politicians when you compare it to how much power and money and lobbyists the banking industry has.I won't complain. It's a start. The amounts may rise in time. I think that politicians will try to keep all the lobbyists happy (at a certain degree).
And the bankers have seen that there's money in crypto industry, and they may go for that money, instead of war. So I don't expect them to lobby against crypto, not anymore.
So we may be on the good track, actually.
politicians today have to be very careful speaking against crypto or they will have to win the hearts of the crypto community to be able to win a race.
Nah I don't think so. Has politicians really required the votes of the masses to win their elections? The higher percentage of them don't really care and that is why they would criticize every good thing that is coming to the side of the masses like they are speeding bad information about bitcoin and trying to limit or ban it use.
and given that the banking system hasn't adopted bitcoin or any other crypto yet, you'd better believe their interests run counter to those of the crypto lobbyists.
Visa and Mastercard have shown interest in crypto, and these two companies are the backbone of global banking system. Some individual banks might be highly hostile to crypto, but there are also examples of banks that want to provide their clients with crypto exposure. There's not enough "crypto must be stopped now before it's too late" sentiment among banks or other players, so we don't see any crypto bans in the West.
i think crypto is going to win in the end though. there are just more believers today than what it was before 2017. if the crypto firms are hiring lobbyists to win, the politicians who hold cryptocurrencies i think should also stand up this time because we are back in time when the Demo is trying to win the African American's vote as Patrick Patrick David said.
politicians today have to be very careful speaking against crypto or they will have to win the hearts of the crypto community to be able to win a race.
politicians today have to be very careful speaking against crypto or they will have to win the hearts of the crypto community to be able to win a race.
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The EU is preparing rules that force crypto firms to seek licences and ban tweets meant to manipulate markets.
So they'll basically make Musk's tweets illegal in the EU? Because it surely seems that it should count as tweets meant to manipulate the markets. I wonder how legislation like this can truly be enforced and work properly, given that Twitter and other social media don't belong to any governments. It also seems to be a significant restriction of freedom of speech.As for crypto firms lobbying for favorable legislation, I think it's for the best. Someone has to push the legislators to accept that cryptos are real and in high demand. I only hope that they're lobbying for conditions that will be favorable both for companies and for crypto users in general.
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Based on public disclosures The Economist calculates that crypto firms spent around $5m lobbying the American Senate in the first nine months of 2021. About $2.5m of that was spent between July and September—a quadrupling over the same period last year.
Ugh. That's not nearly enough to gain any sort of influence with politicians when you compare it to how much power and money and lobbyists the banking industry has. Those crypto firms might as well be sending bitcoin to a burn address.But maybe--hopefully--I'm wrong. However, the government has seen cryptocurrency as a threat to the USD since day one (anyone seen the Cryptopia documentary?), and given that the banking system hasn't adopted bitcoin or any other crypto yet, you'd better believe their interests run counter to those of the crypto lobbyists. I try to see stories like this in an optimistic light, but maybe it's my personal psychological makeup or maybe it's me just seeing things for what they are that makes me think efforts like the ones in this story are futile at worst and marginally effective at best.
I guess what I can say with certainty is that I'm glad people are trying to push back against things like the crypto clause in the infrastructure bill. Personally I wrote four letters to my state senators and congressmen a while back, after hearing about how that clause was snuck into the bill. And gee, I wonder who would want to have such a thing tacked on to a bill that on its face has nothing whatsoever to do with cryptocurrency, money laundering, or any of that?
Probably the banks.
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Crypto lobbying is going ballistic
BETWEEN 2017 and mid-2021 the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), America’s derivatives-markets regulator, was one of the agencies that discussed crypto the most. Brian Quintenz, who ran its technology committee, was responsible for much of that, organising presentations on everything from the integrity of bitcoin spot markets to the subject of decentralised finance. “I developed a reputation as being…an advocate of innovation,” he says.
In September Mr Quintenz joined Andreessen Horowitz, a venture-capital firm and an investor in crypto startups, as an adviser. He is only one of many former American officials to have flocked to the cryptoverse. Others include Jay Clayton, the previous head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC); Brian Brooks, who until January was the acting Comptroller of the Currency; and Chris Giancarlo, head of the CFTC between 2017 and 2019. In Britain, Philip Hammond, a former chancellor of the exchequer, joined Copper, a crypto startup, in October.
A recent wobble notwithstanding, the market value of crypto assets has risen 12-fold since early 2020, to $2.4trn. Some places, like El Salvador, have sought to ride the wave, embracing crypto to gain celebrity. Others, such as China and India, have threatened to ban it. Watchdogs in America and Europe, the home to much crypto-trading activity, by contrast, are only just beginning to sniff around digital assets. And that in turn is prompting crypto firms to try to steer, if not head off altogether, the coming wave of regulation. “All of a sudden”, says Loni Mahanta of the Brookings Institution, a think-tank in Washington, lobbying “is on a rocket ship.”
Reams of regulations are potentially in play. One set involves stopping crypto assets from being used to launder money. In October the Financial Action Task Force, an intergovernmental body which sets global standards, recommended new rules for crypto-services providers, including those regarding the user data they must collect. Countries are implementing these, but at varying speeds. A second area, overseen by lawmakers, concerns the taxation of crypto investments. Some countries treat them like property, with levies on capital gains due only when assets are sold. Others regard them as akin to foreign exchange, meaning unrealised gains are also taxed.
A third set of rules involves financial regulation: protecting consumers from fraud, reducing systemic risk and ensuring fair competition. Market watchdogs are pondering whether digital assets count as securities, which require heavy disclosures from issuers, or as commodities, where the (lighter) onus is on exchanges to prevent market manipulation. Gary Gensler, the head of the SEC, has said he wants tougher policing of the crypto “Wild West”. The EU is preparing rules that force crypto firms to seek licences and ban tweets meant to manipulate markets. Officials seem keenest to tame stablecoins, tokens that are pegged to conventional money.
How to win friends
Until recently most crypto firms, some of which aspire to a libertarian Utopia where blockchains remove the need for financial intermediaries and regulators, took little notice of officials. But that has changed as the pressure has ratcheted up. Binance, a large crypto-exchange, came under scrutiny in the summer, with regulators in Britain, Germany and Japan warning that it was conducting certain operations in their jurisdictions without the appropriate authorisation. Another wake-up call came from America in August, when a clause that required many crypto firms to report transactions to the taxman was tucked into President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill. The industry began a counter-offensive.
One prong of it has been to lure government officials and compliance experts from banks with big pay packets. Deepali Vyas of Korn Ferry, a headhunting firm, says senior risk managers are typically promised a salary of $600,000-2m; former high-ranking regulators are also locked in with share options worth tens of millions of dollars, which vest over many years. The ex-head of an American regulator, now at a crypto group, says he spends a lot of time meeting lawmakers and civil servants.
The industry is also hiring lobbyists. Based on public disclosures The Economist calculates that crypto firms spent around $5m lobbying the American Senate in the first nine months of 2021. About $2.5m of that was spent between July and September—a quadrupling over the same period last year. Such activities employ the equivalent of 86 full-time staff, up from just one in 2016. Coinbase, a big crypto exchange, doled out $625,000 on lobbyists in the third quarter alone. Block, a crypto-friendly payments firm, has spent more than $1.7m since April 2020. The campaign is also ramping up in Brussels, the EU’s de facto capital, where the industry has deployed the equivalent of 52 full-time lobbyists.
Some big firms are trying to pre-empt stricter rules by making proposals of their own: Andreessen, for instance, is pressing for self-regulation, while Coinbase argues for a new industry watchdog. Another route for influence comes from firms clubbing together through trade associations. Perianne Boring, who runs the Chamber of Digital Commerce, a group in America that is largely made up of crypto firms, says her work ranges from advocating for bitcoin exchange-traded funds to rebutting arguments linking cryptocurrencies to ransomware. “We’re seeing much higher-level officials engaging with us,” she says.
The industry has gained political capital, too. In America, the congressional Blockchain Caucus counts 35 lawmakers as members. Cynthia Lummis, a senator from Wyoming, has received a big chunk of her 2026 campaign contributions from individuals linked to crypto firms. Last month she said she opposed Jerome Powell’s reappointment as head of the Federal Reserve because of the central bank’s “political approach to digital assets”. In October 2020 the Chamber of Digital Commerce’s political-action committee gave $50 worth of bitcoin to every member of Congress.
With watchdogs on the alert, crypto-capitalists’ visions for regulation are unlikely to materialise in their entirety. But the risk is that they lead to puny rules. In August the passage of the infrastructure bill was delayed by a week after a bipartisan group of lawmakers objected to the crypto provision. The legislation, including the provision, was eventually enacted in November. But a new bill is now trying to weaken the crypto clause. The rewards for walking through the revolving doors are only going up.
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/crypto-lobbying-is-going-ballistic/21806674
BETWEEN 2017 and mid-2021 the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), America’s derivatives-markets regulator, was one of the agencies that discussed crypto the most. Brian Quintenz, who ran its technology committee, was responsible for much of that, organising presentations on everything from the integrity of bitcoin spot markets to the subject of decentralised finance. “I developed a reputation as being…an advocate of innovation,” he says.
In September Mr Quintenz joined Andreessen Horowitz, a venture-capital firm and an investor in crypto startups, as an adviser. He is only one of many former American officials to have flocked to the cryptoverse. Others include Jay Clayton, the previous head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC); Brian Brooks, who until January was the acting Comptroller of the Currency; and Chris Giancarlo, head of the CFTC between 2017 and 2019. In Britain, Philip Hammond, a former chancellor of the exchequer, joined Copper, a crypto startup, in October.
A recent wobble notwithstanding, the market value of crypto assets has risen 12-fold since early 2020, to $2.4trn. Some places, like El Salvador, have sought to ride the wave, embracing crypto to gain celebrity. Others, such as China and India, have threatened to ban it. Watchdogs in America and Europe, the home to much crypto-trading activity, by contrast, are only just beginning to sniff around digital assets. And that in turn is prompting crypto firms to try to steer, if not head off altogether, the coming wave of regulation. “All of a sudden”, says Loni Mahanta of the Brookings Institution, a think-tank in Washington, lobbying “is on a rocket ship.”
Reams of regulations are potentially in play. One set involves stopping crypto assets from being used to launder money. In October the Financial Action Task Force, an intergovernmental body which sets global standards, recommended new rules for crypto-services providers, including those regarding the user data they must collect. Countries are implementing these, but at varying speeds. A second area, overseen by lawmakers, concerns the taxation of crypto investments. Some countries treat them like property, with levies on capital gains due only when assets are sold. Others regard them as akin to foreign exchange, meaning unrealised gains are also taxed.
A third set of rules involves financial regulation: protecting consumers from fraud, reducing systemic risk and ensuring fair competition. Market watchdogs are pondering whether digital assets count as securities, which require heavy disclosures from issuers, or as commodities, where the (lighter) onus is on exchanges to prevent market manipulation. Gary Gensler, the head of the SEC, has said he wants tougher policing of the crypto “Wild West”. The EU is preparing rules that force crypto firms to seek licences and ban tweets meant to manipulate markets. Officials seem keenest to tame stablecoins, tokens that are pegged to conventional money.
How to win friends
Until recently most crypto firms, some of which aspire to a libertarian Utopia where blockchains remove the need for financial intermediaries and regulators, took little notice of officials. But that has changed as the pressure has ratcheted up. Binance, a large crypto-exchange, came under scrutiny in the summer, with regulators in Britain, Germany and Japan warning that it was conducting certain operations in their jurisdictions without the appropriate authorisation. Another wake-up call came from America in August, when a clause that required many crypto firms to report transactions to the taxman was tucked into President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill. The industry began a counter-offensive.
One prong of it has been to lure government officials and compliance experts from banks with big pay packets. Deepali Vyas of Korn Ferry, a headhunting firm, says senior risk managers are typically promised a salary of $600,000-2m; former high-ranking regulators are also locked in with share options worth tens of millions of dollars, which vest over many years. The ex-head of an American regulator, now at a crypto group, says he spends a lot of time meeting lawmakers and civil servants.
The industry is also hiring lobbyists. Based on public disclosures The Economist calculates that crypto firms spent around $5m lobbying the American Senate in the first nine months of 2021. About $2.5m of that was spent between July and September—a quadrupling over the same period last year. Such activities employ the equivalent of 86 full-time staff, up from just one in 2016. Coinbase, a big crypto exchange, doled out $625,000 on lobbyists in the third quarter alone. Block, a crypto-friendly payments firm, has spent more than $1.7m since April 2020. The campaign is also ramping up in Brussels, the EU’s de facto capital, where the industry has deployed the equivalent of 52 full-time lobbyists.
Some big firms are trying to pre-empt stricter rules by making proposals of their own: Andreessen, for instance, is pressing for self-regulation, while Coinbase argues for a new industry watchdog. Another route for influence comes from firms clubbing together through trade associations. Perianne Boring, who runs the Chamber of Digital Commerce, a group in America that is largely made up of crypto firms, says her work ranges from advocating for bitcoin exchange-traded funds to rebutting arguments linking cryptocurrencies to ransomware. “We’re seeing much higher-level officials engaging with us,” she says.
The industry has gained political capital, too. In America, the congressional Blockchain Caucus counts 35 lawmakers as members. Cynthia Lummis, a senator from Wyoming, has received a big chunk of her 2026 campaign contributions from individuals linked to crypto firms. Last month she said she opposed Jerome Powell’s reappointment as head of the Federal Reserve because of the central bank’s “political approach to digital assets”. In October 2020 the Chamber of Digital Commerce’s political-action committee gave $50 worth of bitcoin to every member of Congress.
With watchdogs on the alert, crypto-capitalists’ visions for regulation are unlikely to materialise in their entirety. But the risk is that they lead to puny rules. In August the passage of the infrastructure bill was delayed by a week after a bipartisan group of lawmakers objected to the crypto provision. The legislation, including the provision, was eventually enacted in November. But a new bill is now trying to weaken the crypto clause. The rewards for walking through the revolving doors are only going up.
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/crypto-lobbying-is-going-ballistic/21806674
....
This is interesting:
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The industry is also hiring lobbyists. Based on public disclosures The Economist calculates that crypto firms spent around $5m lobbying the American Senate in the first nine months of 2021. About $2.5m of that was spent between July and September—a quadrupling over the same period last year. Such activities employ the equivalent of 86 full-time staff, up from just one in 2016. Coinbase, a big crypto exchange, doled out $625,000 on lobbyists in the third quarter alone. Block, a crypto-friendly payments firm, has spent more than $1.7m since April 2020. The campaign is also ramping up in Brussels, the EU’s de facto capital, where the industry has deployed the equivalent of 52 full-time lobbyists.
Also interesting:
Quote
The industry has gained political capital, too. In America, the congressional Blockchain Caucus counts 35 lawmakers as members. Cynthia Lummis, a senator from Wyoming, has received a big chunk of her 2026 campaign contributions from individuals linked to crypto firms. Last month she said she opposed Jerome Powell’s reappointment as head of the Federal Reserve because of the central bank’s “political approach to digital assets”. In October 2020 the Chamber of Digital Commerce’s political-action committee gave $50 worth of bitcoin to every member of Congress.
I wonder if it is possible to implement this:
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The EU is preparing rules that force crypto firms to seek licences and ban tweets meant to manipulate markets.
The developer of a crypto token could make offhand comments which affect market prices. They could be interviewed and clarify on a point which drives prices up or down. They simply tweet "to the moon" and have it affect trends. I have a big question on this point as to what might be considered "market manipulation". If Elon Musk tweets he is contributing to dogecoin development and the value of dogecoin rises, would that be considered market manipulation?
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