A top crypto think tank says the industry must secure congressional protections now or face aggressive enforcement in the future.
Coin Center Executive Director Peter Van Valkenburgh warns it’s now been seven weeks since testimony from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, 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 keep prosecuting developers of privacy tools under 18 U.S.C. § 1960 as unlicensed money transmitters.
He says the SEC would also revoke existing crypto-friendly guidance, while Treasury and FinCEN would impose broader Bank Secrecy Act rules requiring AML and KYC obligations across decentralized networks.
“There are, indeed, nihilists in crypto, and if they win the day, well then we will all be in crypto hell.
Whether that be by rejecting the developer protections in CLARITY and the BRCA in favor of short term business interests, or by depending on the continued goodwill of those in charge, that future is grim.”
Valkenburgh says a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers including Democrats Ron Wyden and Ritchie Torres, Republicans Tom Emmer, Cynthia Lummis and Warren Davidson offer a rare chance to lock in lasting protections that bind future administrations.
“The point of passing CLARITY is not to trust this administration. 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’d have a bit more revenue and a bit more latitude under the short-term friendly discretion of the current administration, then we lose our way.
We fail 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, handing it to the future officials who will be only too happy to pull it tight.
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