I've been following this discussion in Washington and on Hacker News. I'm moderately anti-crypto--I don't buy the pitch but am open to being wrong and believe folks should be free to do what they want with it.
I've also been struck by the proliferation of bank-like services without bank-like obligations. This stretches from fractional-reserve and maturity-transforming services like Tether to exchanges/dealers like Binance and ersatz money transmitters like BitPay.
We need AML (edit: anti-money laundering) and tax reporting at those nexuses. If the answer is there should be no AML, KYC (edit: know-your-customer rules) and/or reporting by cryptocurrency companies, we have no common ground on this argument. To date, this is what I have most-commonly heard. If that's what the Senate is hearing, it's unsurprising they consider the debate closed. If the argument is a reasonable tweak to who has to report, or what or the form in which it must be reported, policy makers are listening. (Wyden's amendment is a result of reasonable concerns expressed by miners.)
I've also been struck by the proliferation of bank-like services without bank-like obligations. This stretches from fractional-reserve and maturity-transforming services like Tether to exchanges/dealers like Binance and ersatz money transmitters like BitPay.
We need AML (edit: anti-money laundering) and tax reporting at those nexuses. If the answer is there should be no AML, KYC (edit: know-your-customer rules) and/or reporting by cryptocurrency companies, we have no common ground on this argument. To date, this is what I have most-commonly heard. If that's what the Senate is hearing, it's unsurprising they consider the debate closed. If the argument is a reasonable tweak to who has to report, or what or the form in which it must be reported, policy makers are listening. (Wyden's amendment is a result of reasonable concerns expressed by miners.)