THELOGICALINDIAN - Software developer Stephen Diehl was amid those who active the lobbying letter calling crypto chancy awry and unproven
A accumulation of 26 technologists, including some of crypto’s best animated critics, has beatific a lobbying letter to U.S. assembly advancement them “resist pressure” from crypto financiers and lobbyists to actualize a authoritative safe anchorage for agenda assets.
Tech Experts Counter-Lobby Crypto
A accumulation of acclaimed technology pundits and academics has beatific a letter to U.S. assembly in the aboriginal organized attack to counter-lobby the crypto industry in Washington.
The letter, active by 26 people, including some of the crypto industry’s best articulate critics like software developer Stephen Diehl and Google Cloud architect Kelsey Hightower, argues that blockchain technology has “few, if any, real-economy uses,” and that crypto assets accept abounding abrogating externalities, including threats to civic security, banking adherence risks, and massive altitude emissions.
Addressed to both Senate majority and boyhood leaders as able-bodied as several added baronial U.S. Senate members, the letter read:
“We appetite you to abide burden from agenda asset industry financiers, lobbyists, and boosters to actualize a authoritative safe anchorage for these risky, flawed, and ambiguous agenda banking instruments and to instead booty an access that protects the accessible absorption and ensures technology is deployed in 18-carat account to the needs of accustomed citizens.”
The signatories additionally argued that blockchain-based banking articles are a “disaster for banking privacy,” except for those that are not, which in about-face allegedly represent a “gift to money-launderers.” However, the allegations that crypto assets are disproportionately actuality acclimated for adulterous activities may not authority abundant arete back the accordant abstracts is considered. According to a 2022 report by blockchain analytics close Chainalysis, money bed-making accounted for aloof 0.05% of all cryptocurrency affairs in 2021. For comparison, the UN Office of Drugs and Crime has estimated that amid $800 billion and $2 abundance of authorization bill is apple-pie anniversary year, tallying up as aerial as 5% of all-around GDP.
Diehl, one of the best agog crypto critics on Twitter, reportedly told the Financial Times that the letter is about “counter-lobbying” the crypto industry’s bodies that “say what they appetite to the politicians.” Former Microsoft architect Miguel de Icaza added that the crypto industry is “wasting millions of dollars’ account of accessories because we’ve absitively that we don’t assurance the cyberbanking system.”
According to a March Bloomberg report, the crypto industry has spent about $9 actor on lobbying in 2021, or added than amateur what it did the antecedent year.
Disclosure: At the time of writing, the columnist of this allotment endemic ETH and several added cryptocurrencies.
