After years of crypto kingpins being handcuffed and sent to prison, numerous spectacular bankruptcies, rampant fraud and manipulation, breathtaking volatility and a long list of lost court cases, the crypto industry is nonetheless riding high in the US.
That’s partly because it has a huge cash pile that it is willing to spend on campaigns to buy the support of politicians who will back its special interest agenda. The crypto industry’s big goal is to pick its own regulator and get a veneer of legitimacy, but not be regulated much at all.
As the Securities and Exchange Commission is a very powerful and effective cop on the crypto beat, the industry sees this regulator as its “mortal enemy”. The crypto crowd wants its political allies to put the smallest, least funded, least capable, and most easily capturable financial regulatory agency in charge of crypto — the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.