> If Steve Jobs had to "explain and demonstrate" why the iPhone would be better than flip phones and blackberries to the satisfaction of Congress before being a

> If Steve Jobs had to "explain and demonstrate" why the iPhone would be better than flip phones and blackberries to the satisfaction of Congress before being allowed to experiment with its design, Apple probably would have just moved their HQ to China, and Americans would be the ones missing out. Apple had to comply with a ton of regulations and laws when making the iPhone. Off the top of my head, they had to comply with various product safety laws, FCC frequency allocations, and consumer protection rules. The US (and most other countries) have a lot of regulations for managing money and investments. These apply regardless of the underlying technology being used. Legally, the only thing cryptocurrencies brought is that they didn't obviously fit into any existing legal framework. This was mostly due to a lack of judicial precedence, not because cryptocurrencies were fundamentally different. This isn't writing laws to stifle innovation. This is using laws that already exist to actually regulate companies that have managed to avoid it before now.