4 ms·

I wonder if people lobbied to keep the internet regulated and out of the hands of the general public. Surely someone must have.

Seriomino 4y ago
pjc50 4y ago
They are and they do and it is; even in the US there are intelligence services in the routers and the FBI "seizing" websites. Truly unregulated anything lasts only until it starts causing large enough problems.
jameshart 4y ago
Bad analogy. In this case you have a finance industry trying to get congress to give them free rein to experiment with crypto. They're asking for latitude around things like securities law, financial disclosure requirements, anti-money-laundering, consumer finance protection, etc. - with the excuse being 'we have to be allowed to explore innovative technologies!' And what this letter represents is technologists trying to say, there's nothing sufficiently interesting here technologically speaking to justify granting that license. There's simply no equivalent to this in 'internet' regulation terms. ARPAnet wasn't opened up to commercial use based on finance industry lobbying over the objections of technologists.
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  It's the other way around actually: Crypto is currently NOT covered by most of the things you list (securities laws, regulation etc). Coinbase etc just want to keep it (mostly) that way. This is an important difference because really you should be able to explore tech without having to show up-front (to the satisfaction of a government agency or a self appointed group) that it is sufficiently interesting technically to be permitted. Also, I don't entirely buy that Coinbase (specifically) want to prevent regulation. They've worked hard to position themselves as the regulated, above board, professional option in the space. More or Tighter regulation (but not an outright bad) would likely help them as they would likely already be compliant and other providers would either fold or close to US users or scramble to catchup...
  - jameshart 4y ago
    The fintech industry is trying to frame the Overton window around crypto with various claims - including the claim that they are outside existing regulation, as well as that they don’t need additional regulation, and anyway they can’t be regulated. This is how lobbying works.

Seriomino 4y ago

pjc50 4y ago

They are and they do and it is; even in the US there are intelligence services in the routers and the FBI "seizing" websites. Truly unregulated anything lasts only until it starts causing large enough problems.

jameshart 4y ago

Bad analogy. In this case you have a finance industry trying to get congress to give them free rein to experiment with crypto. They're asking for latitude around things like securities law, financial disclosure requirements, anti-money-laundering, consumer finance protection, etc. - with the excuse being 'we have to be allowed to explore innovative technologies!' And what this letter represents is technologists trying to say, there's nothing sufficiently interesting here technologically speaking to justify granting that license. There's simply no equivalent to this in 'internet' regulation terms. ARPAnet wasn't opened up to commercial use based on finance industry lobbying over the objections of technologists.

LatteLazy 4y ago
It's the other way around actually: Crypto is currently NOT covered by most of the things you list (securities laws, regulation etc). Coinbase etc just want to keep it (mostly) that way. This is an important difference because really you should be able to explore tech without having to show up-front (to the satisfaction of a government agency or a self appointed group) that it is sufficiently interesting technically to be permitted. Also, I don't entirely buy that Coinbase (specifically) want to prevent regulation. They've worked hard to position themselves as the regulated, above board, professional option in the space. More or Tighter regulation (but not an outright bad) would likely help them as they would likely already be compliant and other providers would either fold or close to US users or scramble to catchup...
- jameshart 4y ago
  The fintech industry is trying to frame the Overton window around crypto with various claims - including the claim that they are outside existing regulation, as well as that they don’t need additional regulation, and anyway they can’t be regulated. This is how lobbying works.