Topic: Devastating "Infrastructure" bill in US - contact your representatives (Read 678 times)

Wyden's amendment was the same one as discussed earlier in this thread - the Wyden/Lummis/Toomey amendment. It was blocked by Senator Shelby. It was then absorbed in to the combined Toomy/Warner/Lummis/Sinema/Portman amendment which was also blocked by Shelby. The bill has now passed the Senate with the original terrible wording.

The next step is that the bill will go to the House of Representatives to be debated and potentially amended there. The House is supposed to be on recess until September 20, but Steny Hoyer has said they will likely return much earlier, as early as August 23, to consider this bill. So everyone's got another 10 days to start contacting your Representative.

There is certainly some movement in the House regarding amending this bill. There was the tweet from Tom Emmer (co-chair of the Blockchain Caucus) which I linked to above, and earlier today there was this tweet from Anna Eshoo, who apparently is a close friend of Pelosi: https://twitter.com/RepAnnaEshoo/status/1425854869122998273

Bit of a rare occurrence, yeah.  If I had to guess, it's because there's still a reasonable element of uncertainty about it.  And it hasn't been given a huge amount of media coverage.  Then again, I try to avoid the futility of trying to guess what the market is going to do next.  Doesn't usually take much to prompt a big swing in prices.

I’m pleasantly surprised there wasn’t a weak handed sell off when Shelby decided to be an asshole & handicip bitcoin in the US (from 2023). Maybe it’s not as serious a blow as I initially thought. I’m from the UK so not directly affected any way but it would have annoyed me if we had a big dump because of it.

I know there are multiple ways the language in the bill can still be altered before it becomes law in the US. I iust thought it was interesting (and obviously good) that the price didn’t suffer.

You went way too fast way too far..
No, it's not a complicated scheme, those numbers are simply a product of two things, sometimes combined, sometimes independent
- paid articles by exchanges or wallet or other solutions providers that want to boost their numbers
- researches done to justify the exitance of some research groups and the price they ask for polling information

Would an article mentioning the fact that there are only 15 million addresses with more than 100$ worth of bitcoin make the headlines? And it is addresses, not users! "Less than 0.5% of the world population owns more than 100$ in Bitcoin", nope, not clickable!
It's the common thing when it comes to news nowadays, if you die in a crash in a pile-up on the highway with 50 others you will have a hundred articles about you, if you die alone hitting a pole you won't get even a line, big numbers and big claims it what matters, that's why you see journalist switching between the increase in price from cents to percentages, to give you the impression that something really really extraordinary is happening.

Across Europe we have a 10% so-called crypto adoption, every 1 in 10 should own some crypto, I really want to know where the fword are the supposed 200 thousand crypto owners in my metropolitan area cause I'm not seeing them anywhere, real-life, forums, Facebook, nowhere! Not even in one of the coffee shops that takes crypto where the owner always tells us that if it were for just for us same four guys that pay like that once a month he wouldn't be able to pay even the power bill for his laptop.

Anyhow, enough venting, where are we with this bill as I'm seeing a lot of articles running around in circles?
There was an amendment by Wyden, it was supposed to be adopted and then I read it was blocked(!?), so what is the current situation?

Oh gawd.... 

What's worse?  Coming up with your own number or quoting a lame study without employing any critical thinking?

I am not opposed to small sample sizes, but surely the outcome of this survey shows that the sample is not even close to representative if they are concluding that 17% of adult americans own "at least a share" of bitcoin whatever that means? - (it could mean owning 1 satoshi, no?)...

I surely would not poo poo if most Americans bought bitcoin with their stimulus checks, or even if 10% of them had, but we know that did not happen, even if some (maybe 1% or 2% may have)...

Seems like you and I may well be on a similar page, Lucius, yet I will just repeat that there seems to be an agenda in terms of overstating the level of adoption of bitcoin, and surely frequently there are desires to treat bitcoin like a mature market (asset class) or to suggest that it's run has already happened and minimize the actual fact that bitcoin is in the midst (more likely early stages) of exponential s-curve adoption, and there is still a lot of room to go.. and also in terms of portfolio size, there are very few people who likely have even 1% or even better yet 5% of their portfolio allocation in bitcoin... and we are even lucky if we can find more than 10 million people who actually know what bitcoin is even amongst current owners.... but whatever.. people can believe whatever they want to believe, and it is not even any kind of actual facts that I am able to gather either regarding actual levels of bitcoin ownership/adoption, so anyone of us who are trying to estimate bitcoin ownership/adoption levels do have to rely on a variety of sources including things like surveys, address sizes, exchange information and things like that.

He only believes in what he has read in the media, and the US media have been publishing just such information for several months now. Although the sample of 1050 consumers for me personally is not something that can give even relevant results. I really don't know where they all got BTC from, maybe stimulus checks helped them with that, or they were very active on faucets

Did you catch yesterday's roundup of the 10 sides of the raging crypto regulation debate?

If you didn't, start there by clicking the link. If you did, let's continue today with a contrarian pro-regulation view that intelligent crypto-enthusiasts like us can hold.

1. So far, the advantages of crypto - like decentralized finance, censorship resistance, and inflation hedges - are based off theory and very little empirical evidence.

So far, governments have treated crypto like a fad, but now they are fighting it. If the whole point of crypto was the ability to withstand this fight, surely regulation is the best test of its capabilities? Maybe regulation will cause the crypto fiat value to drop, but it cannot touch the underlying code and logic networks.

Individual crypto businesses might fail due to regulation, but whatever survives in spite of regulations will have demonstrated the consumer value, network resilience, and competitive advantage of decentralized finance, and truly bring into reality all the advantages we currently only read about in whitepapers.

Holy shit.

You believe that 46 million Americans own bitcoin?  Would those be significant and meaningful levels of ownership or some kind of token ownership of 10,000 satoshis?  How would they own such bitcoin?  on robinhood?  From where do you get that kind of a number of bitcoin owners?

Seems that 46 million would be something like 15% of the quasi-adult USA population, no? - if we considered that maybe there are about 300 million Americans over the age of 12 (presuming that NOT too many Americans below 12 own significant amounts of bitcoin - even if there are anecdotal cases of such happenings).

I would suspect that there could be 10% of Americans that have some exposure to bitcoin (not likely much if anything), but still probably less than 1-2% that have any kind of significant and meaningful stake in bitcoin - such as up to 5% or more of their investment portfolio (however they quantify their investment portfolio - or even have one).

Of course, there is geographical disproportionalities in bitcoin (whether we are referring to the USA or other parts of the world), and likely the worldwide levels of bitcoin adoption are even way smaller than they are in the USA.. , and even though I am kind of shooting my own numbers out of my ass, I tend to get a bit irritated when I see members suggesting that bitcoin adoption is at any kind of significant and meaningful levels, even if there is truth that there seems to be decent willingness for the bitcoin (and perhaps crypto, too - those shitcoining/scamming fucks) to be pretty damned vocal and influential in recent times, but the vocal activism and influentialness of bitcoin, to the extent it exist, is surely NOT coming based on widespread adoption of bitcoin, and in that regard, we quite likely remain early as fuck in terms of actual broader levels of popular bitcoin adoption, whether referring to the USA or other parts of the world which is even likely lower levels of bitcoin adoption, as I already mentioned.

im not playing social drama games. your obsession with social drama is what confuses YOU when you see other people write stuff.. you think its all about drama queens because thats your obsession is..
grow up..

anyways..
to all other readers:

people should learn stuff about how politics and how regulations work. for their own learning.

politicians. are not the guys that enforce regulations. thats for things like the SEC and courts. so like i said before, learn the SEC interpretations of a broker. such as learn about MSB. then you will learn how the SEC will enforce the regulations.
how the SEC will register brokers and get them to comply. who the SEC will get to comply, etc

because if this bill passes it wont be a congressman or a senator handling the bureaucracy of it all. its not politicians interpretations that matter. its the SEC's interpretation. as they are the ones that enforce it.

so learn who is going to be doing what. learn what is going to be doing who. then you may start to have some thoughts about what should be amended.. instead of playing ignorant and just wanting to shout that 'goberment are bad men' with memes(facepalm)

because all i can see is people crying "old man made me angwy. mummy hit the bad man' even though they cant even work out what their suppose to be angry about. or who

FACT: old guy in all the memes shown is not going to be the guy heading up the broker registration applications.. so learn who is and what it takes to be a broker..
if you stil dont know.. LEARN then have an opinion. and stop the social drama of having an opinion without learning

again a hint: MSB

while all you lot are pointing fingers and making chidlish means of an old guy politician. you are not learning about what the SEC are going to be interpreting as it will be them that will be doing the actual regulation stuff.
so go learn, and dont waste time making memes

and if over the last 10 days of this topic creation. if you have

• made atleast 5 posts in this topic
• you still dont know words such as 'series 7'.. 'MSB' and how they relate to this topic..
• you have only read the truncated tweet/o_e_l_e_o version of bill

     "any person who (for consideration) is responsible for and regularly provides any service effectuating transfers of digital assets."[missing part tweet/o_e_l_e_o omitted 'for another person']

• yet you DO know about a meme seen on twitter involving an old politician
• whereby you know his name and his age and all that drama..

.. then your research has been wasted in the wrong direction for the last 10 days... probably take a few days away from twitter and reddit and use your time more wisely on better sources of info.

That's them bending the knee to the US.


And on a perhaps unrelated note, amazing that this few lines about crypto in a bill totally unrelated to crypto, was what held up everyone. On a big picture view, this event will be seen as a watershed moment and will do more for recognition that first thought.

Anyway, next chance up for amendment, on to the House. Will probably happen later this year on the back of another ATH ride.

The bill is clearly being revoked by the crypto enthusiast in the USA because more than 46 million Americans now owns bitcoin and percentage is being grown at rapid pace but these demotivational and anti crypto bills in the name of trillion dollars infrastructure bills are clearly not good for most of us but if someone believes it then having prejudice mind of knowing everything then we can't say anything to them or make clarifications to them.These government puppets who only wants to make decisions for their bank rolls will also come to one point where inflation will end up all their bad moves because crypto is not going to be ignored now.

You need an "Explain like I'm in my thirties, but have all the social awareness of a 5-year-old".  

Your interpretation of what the bill mentions or not is irrelevant to the matter at hand.  You have no influence.  Any thoughts you may have on the subject have zero impact.  What matters is how the largely uninformed and often corrupt politicians interpret what the bill mentions or doesn't mention.  

So if you could take a break from trying to be the centre of attention and boasting "lOoK hOw SmRt I aMs", whilst simultaneously grossly missing the point, that would be great.  

It is clear that franky1 is a peculiar guy. I put him on ignore for a while. Not only does he seem to understand it better than all the members of Congress, but also all the forum members who have commented on the thread and the other crypto news sites, Youtube videos etc. that I've seen have commented on the bill. None have the vision that franky1 has, but he has it so clear that he calls us trolls:


We are all mistaken and do not understand such obvious things. Lol.

I really don't want to hash this out with you for a second time. I would suggest you go and watch any of the recordings of the Senate proceedings from the last couple of days (they are all freely available on YouTube), where you can see them discussing exactly this issue. When the people whose jobs it is to interpret the bill think that the wording includes miners, nodes, and devs, then that's what is going to happen. When the people who actually wrote the cryptocurrency provision in the bill (Senators Portman and Sinema) then file an amendment to correct it because they agree the wording is too broad, then it doesn't matter what you or anybody else thinks - the government thinks that miners can now be classed as brokers, and so they will do that as and when it suits their purposes.

If you think you understand the bill better than the entirety of the US Congress, then great for you. But as far as they are concerned, this wording allows miners, nodes, and devs to be classified as brokers. It doesn't matter how stupid you think that is - that is the conclusion they have reached, and so that is the conclusion that the government and IRS will work on unless we get the bill amended.

no where in the bill does it mention that nodes, devs or miners will be brokers

and there is too much crying in this topic from people that cant understand anything beyond ELI-5 to understand what the wording actually does say

its almost as stupid as hinting that uber drivers are brokers because they take custody and move around assets(people and packages)
(now await the FUD to start of parcel companies needing to inspect all packages incase they contain private keys. because in these fantasists minds parcel companies and delivery guys should be brokers too(facepalm))

people really need to read proper terminology and stop crying because they dont understand the wording
no bill has ever been wrote in ELI-5. so it needs people to stop crying thats its not wrote eli-5. and put some effort into understanding legalese and actually learn what financial terminology is


its not about random people just seeing accounts/transactions(nodes)
its not about random people just collating accounts/transactions(miners)
its definetly not about random people making software for it(developers)

yes its not about mining pools because mining pools dont actually get deposits or do withdrawals.

its about regularly offering a service to take responsibility of someones funds(custodian)and for a fee administer it to someone else.. its the definition of a MSB
Money Service Business

think more.. western union. and less about your grandma putting money in your birthday card..

..
also lets say in some 5yo's nightmare where their nightmare came true. its not like users are suppose to by law just email the SEC with any transaction they spot over $10k

its actually a case still where businesses offering regular services of deposits and withdrawals on behalf of other people for a fee. where those businesses have to register as a MSB. take some financial qualification, and have a employee that is a compliance guy, create their own policy handbook of how their business will operate to remain compliant.
have that policy handbook approved as meeting the standards of regulation. get licenced
and such.... and then as part of it. report any large movements they handle

once people actually read what it takes to be a broker. they will realise that their nightmares about nodes. miners. devs are just dreams.. .. fantasies in their head. and not what is actually being proposed. because their role/job/hobby/life has nothing to do with that kind of 'handling' of funds

alot of people in this topic spreading fear dont even know what a MSB is and always evade the discussion about MSB's, and try to poke into the fear that every human has to report on each other..

if only they learn about what the requirements are to be an MSB..  they might learn what brokers really are and why their fears are so irrational. and missing the real discussion that should be happening about the bill.

develops node users and miners were never in the red zone of risk..
if people realise that sooner they could ask their senators for actual amendments that would impact those who are at risk even less.
EG. ensuring it only applies to US registered MSB serving only US residents. and not stretching to other country MSB serving US residents. or US MSB serving other countries residents
as not ensuring that can expand US jurisdiction too far outside its borders

..
its like people are crying if this is said
"any person running in the olympics has to have a mandatory drug test every 6 years"
the crying is about the "any person" where now its spreading fud that any runner has to have drug tests..
WRONG
they miss out the crucial parts .. they miss out understanding what it takes to actually qualify for the olympics.
they miss out that it involves only those on the olymplic running track

all because fud "any person" makes it sound bad for everyone (facepalm)

can people try to learn the legalese and actually learn things like MSB and brokers. and stop crying about two words taken out of context "any person"

.. then spend your time learning where this bill can actually impact people

Incorrect. The estimated crypto tax revenues would account for about 2% of the spending in this bill.

It's not the tax which will cripple growth, it's the definition of miners, nodes, and developers as "brokers".

No, they want to clarify the language so that only actual brokers are classified as brokers.

The proposed amendment didn't exempt them from regulation, but simply define broker properly.

Your video and transcript is badly inaccurate.

---

There might be a small sliver of hope for other countries. If this bill does pass unchanged, and forces miners, nodes, developers, indeed the entire cryptocurrency industry out of the US, then other developed nations will see a big boost to their own industries, along with the growth, profit and taxable revenue that this brings. They might decide it is in their best interests to legislate more cautiously/cleverly, and attract as much of this their country as possible. Imagine the advantage, for example, if one country had attracted the majority of early internet developers. They may view bitcoin and cryptocurrency in the same way.

It's not going to "force" anything, the EU is already taking steps in that direction as I was saying in a previous comment:

EU wants to ban crypto anonymous transactions and wallets

The rest of the countries, maybe they have not started with legislative initiatives like that but that is what they want. They don't need much persuasion to take steps in that direction.

Another problem I see is that large institutional buyers, that could influence politicians, won't care that you can't do anonymous P2P transactions. The only thing they will care about is if it affects the price, but I think that influence will be short term only. Saylor, Musk etc, buy fully KYC. That we individuals can have a privacy space on the blockchain I think they don't really care.

Somehow missed this point yesterday, and it's more valid by the day.

Ask anyone anywhere in the world working in finance/banking. When it comes to compliance, they can find wiggle room for EU laws, even for OECD but if it just breathes on OFAC and the US, everything else is put on the back burner.

"US nexus" is the kill-all in compliance. And if this bill passes, which it looks like it will, it's going to force the EU and others to change the way they view crypto dealings with individuals/p2p.

If you remember what happened when FB Libra was on the agenda in US politics, you could see what attitude US politics took and cut it at the root - while Congressman Sherman called Bitcoin just a little baby - which was obviously starting to be a growing threat. At that time, the former Treasury Secretary Mnuchin gave a speech in which he only reiterated that the US would defend its currency in all possible ways.

This is just a continuation of a policy that was obviously quietly being prepared during the Trump presidency - only it was not clear to the public, as was the case in China when in 2019 they clearly said that they would ban crypto mining which was preceded by the banning of everything else related to cryptocurrencies.

I agree that politics will never allow the people to be too independent of a system that favors the rich and successful - and they need people who work 8 hours a day, have mortgages, and are afraid of the system. I dare say that little has changed since the time of slavery, the common man is more or less just a modern slave who gets just enough to survive - the goal of politics is to keep it that way.

The US senate debate on crypto rages on. Can you understand this sentence? 'The Biden administration is pushing back against a last-minute effort by a bipartisan group of senators to limit a proposal in the infrastructure bill to increase federal regulation of cryptocurrencies'.

Lobbying against lobbying against lobbying? Maybe we need a blockchain to record and verify opinions of lawmakers on crypto. Today let's try and make sense at least of how many sides to this debate there are, even if we can't understand who is on which side!

Side 1 is easy: The Biden administration wants to tax crypto to fund an infrastructure bill.

Side 2 is easy: crypto investors think this will cripple growth.

Side 3: Some senators want an amendment that limits the authority of the executive over crypto.

Side 4: 2 senators propose a compromise, that exempts some crypto actors from regulation, seen as too few exemptions by Side 3 and too many by Side 1.

Side 5 now just wants to break this impasse and get the infrastructure bill passed.

Side 6 takes specific issue with the definition of a crypto miner, that they think will drive miners out of the US.

Side 7 takes issue with crypto mining and the energy footprint it causes.

Side 8 is the news media that writes confusing narratives, and Side 9 is people like us trying desperately to count how many sides there are!