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Crypto is going big time politics with speculations of potentially launching a PAC as Ryan Selkis (pictured), a former VC now CEO of Messari, says “this isn’t red vs blue. We’re going to primary everyone who votes Portman/Warner.”
A vote on amendments was delayed yesterday with it potentially to be held today starting at 12PM Washington time.
Discussions have been intense with Mike DeBonis, reporter for Washington Post, stating yesterday:
“Floor is now deserted, except for… the Crypto Gang. Wyden, Portman, Warner, Toomey, Ossoff in a fairly intense conversation in the corner while Sinema chats with Rep legislative staff.”
The Warner amendment includes by omission open source blockchain coders in the definition of a broker with Warner changing that amendment twice yesterday in regards to validators.
First, he was to exclude all validators from the definition of broker, but then decided to exclude only bitcoin and eth validators, puzzling Jerry Brito of Coin Center who said:
“I am speechless. Now they’re picking 2 winners? There are other consensus mechanisms! Why do this?”
Presumably because they have no clue what they’re doing, but some speculate they know exactly what they are doing and what they are trying to do is turn decentralized exchanges into centralized exchanges as far as the law is concerned.
They’re trying to hold open source coders of decentralized exchanges responsible for tax compliance, with things like NFT platforms and defi platforms requiring what colloquially is called dik pics.
That would balkanize this space and would make it a lot less global because some 3 billion people around the world do not have the necessary documents to satisfy such requirements.
In addition it is impossible to have such requirements at the smart contract level itself because decentralized blockchains are permissionless and have no requirement to participate, with smart contracts being code anyone can publish.
Thus at most this would affect only the front interface, with anyone able to bypass it by interacting directly with the contract and so needing not comply with the requirements.
These complexities is probably why they want to leave it to the interpretation of unaccountable bureaucrats who are not subject to the public will through elections.
The punishment of prison however that this law courts, makes the matter very serious, and so serious that the elected can not abrogate their responsibility to the public to decide these matters.
They can choose to chain the open source blockchain coding space within the United States by imposing impossible to comply requirements that will force them offshore, or they can let it thrive at this still very nascent stage with requirements imposed at the point of conversion to fiat.
Fiat exchanges can not be decentralized because you need a bank account, so they’re generally companies with directors and nowadays compliance teams which can meet all these requirements.
Defi platforms on the other hand can be some kid in their basement because anyone can publish code on decentralized blockchains.
So the inclusion by omission or the exclusion from responsibility of these coders is a crucial determinant of how open source code develops in the United States and whether it develops there at all.
Making the involvement in politics now unavoidable for Americans who have to mobilize to secure the right to free code.