In the current furore around the SEC clampdown on crypto, there are a number of parties taking the lead in fighting back, at least in the public eye. There is no doubt Coinbase are justified in their outrage, considering that they were allowed to register as a public company, then sued as an unlicensed securities exchange in the same breath. We are also seeing unprecedented hand-wringing from VCs, hedge fund leaders and talking heads about the catastrophic risks of the US sending crypto off-shore.

But amidst all the noise, it's worth paying attention to the people we aren't hearing from. Arbitrum, whose head was the Chief Technology Officer at the White House, under Obama. Chainlink, whose legacy banking connections are more comprehensive than any other crypto project. Ethereum, who are ostensibly in the spotlight as "security or not?", but whose leaders haven't weighed in on this controversy at all.



What does that tell you? Think about it for a while. Why aren't these projects making noise? Why aren't they launching PR campaigns to unify the crypto space in the face of a hostile and unpredictable regulatory adversary, in the most significant jurisdiction on the planet?

Is it, perhaps, because to them they aren't facing a hostile and unpredictable adversary? My thesis is that what we are seeing now is nothing more than a performance of "bad cop" Gensler that is designed to destabilise and distress certain parts of the industry, while the insiders and quasi-insiders like Chainlink and Arbitrum build full steam ahead, apparently unconcerned by any of it.

Once things reach a fever pitch, with a few sacrificial lambs offered up to the regulatory gods, we will see "good cop" regulation that, despite being much more onerous than what crypto has had to put up with so far, will be welcomed as "clarity and collaboration" on the back of this current hysteria.

Regulations that, if they had been offered up in a vacuum, might have been criticised, will instead be received with open arms, as "anything is better than what we were going through with Gensler."



This is all just a set up for the US to pivot, to bring in "crypto friendly" regulation and to shake up the industry so that it is thankful for the cogent rulemaking as opposed to arbitrary enforcement. And all the highly connected parties like Chainlink and Arbitrum know this already, so they don't have to weigh in to the current discussion at all.

what a dumbass thought.

no, absolutely not.

Gary just doesn't want to say eth's a security because winham said it wasn't, but winham had clear conflict of interests with eth.

and really, the switch has been to focus on vilifying CEX's instead of targeting cryptocurrency directly.

at the end of the day, the government doesn't want crypto to exist, but they know outlawing crypto would be really unpopular, so instead they make it hard for CEX's to work with banks (e.g. silvergate), and step 2 is have the SEC charge CEX's, step 3 is all CEX's have stopped serving US customers.

that's all that's going on.

Checked. Well, I would have tried to argue with you, but you got quads. I guess it's over.

crypto will forever be "zelle/casino for nerds" precisely because you can't regulate it

in real world people can sue and win and you can't reverse a crypto transaction
