Good news for crypto in Washington?
US Senator From Wyoming Could be Our Gal in Washington
US Senator From Wyoming Could be Our Gal in Washington
Newly elected, and first female US Senator from the state of Wyoming, Cynthia Lummis, has been selected to serve on the very influential Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
Wall Street veteran and Bitcoin evangelist, Caitlin Long, herself a booster for cryptocurrency in Wyoming, described the appointment as “huge.”
Lummis made ecosystem headlines during a first post-election interview last year when she appeared to take a rather evolved position on the world’s most popular cryptocurrency.
Lummis stated her priorities in the US Senate include her plan to “explain to my colleagues about Bitcoin. I know there isn’t much known about Bitcoin especially in the congress, so I want to make sure everybody understands that this is a great store of value, something Americans can use to diversify their assets, and to make sure they have assets that don’t have inflation built into them the way the US dollar does.”
The Banking Committee’s history runs parallel to that of the US central bank, The Federal Reserve (Fed). For more than a century the Committee continues to lord over matters related to banking, price controls, monetary policy, redemption of notes issuance, currency and coinage, and a myriad of other jurisdictions as a Legislative Branch check on the Executive (where Treasury and, more or less, The Fed reside legally).
Within the last few years, subjects such as Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have found their way to the Senate Banking Committee. Notorious hearings brought into focus politicians such as Ranking Member Senator Sherrod Brown from Ohio, for example, who raged against crypto in late 2018.
Brown warned “the last ten years have shown that misconduct, fraudulent investment schemes, and cybersecurity threats aren’t unique to the traditional financial system. When a cryptocurrency goes bust or a poorly supervised exchange fails, it’s often hardworking Americans left holding the bag.”
Brown’s narrative has largely won the day among legislators.
Nevertheless, “You guys, a #bitcoiner is on Senate Banking!!,” Long cheered of Lummis. “Fingers had been crossed for this. It means a whole lotta good stuff.”
“Thanks, Caitlin. Ready to get to work,” the Freshwoman Senator responded.
Quick Bytes
Senate Online Snitching Act Proposed
Washington DC crypto think tank, Coincenter, and its Executive Director Jerry Brito, alerted to how a “new Senate bill would create for internet platforms the communications equivalent of the suspicious activity reports that financial institutions must file today.”
Brito cited a recent piece by Elizabeth Nolan Brown of Reason, titled, 'See Something, Say Something Online Act' Punishes Big Tech for Not Snitching. In it she outlines that legislation, sponsored by US Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, would require the following for every offending post: “services must submit a Suspicious Transmission Activity Report (STAR) within 30 days, providing the user's name, location, and other identifying information, as well as any relevant metadata. Those submitting the user surveillance reports would henceforth be barred from talking about or even acknowledging the existence of them. STARs would also be exempt from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.”
“We must decentralize our tools for transmitting money and speech,” Brito insisted.
Visa Expands Digital Currency Roadmap
Payments giant Visa announced this week a “partnership with First Boulevard, a digitally native neobank focused on building generational wealth for the Black community. First Boulevard will be first to pilot Visa’s new suite of crypto APIs, which will enable their customers to purchase, custody, and trade digital assets held by Anchorage — a federally chartered digital asset bank. The pilot will serve as a key first step in supporting API capabilities that help additional Visa clients access and integrate crypto features into their product offering, and is anticipated to launch later this year.”
PayPal Q4 Investor Update
The latest earnings report for PayPal appears to conclude the online payments leader is committed to a crypto-inclusive future. Since dabbling in digital currencies late last year with the help from the likes of Paxos, CEO Daniel Schulman explained during a public call to elaborate on the recent report:
“We all know the current financial system is antiquated, and we can envision a future where transactions are completed in seconds, not days; a future where transactions should be less expensive to complete; and a future that enables all people to be part of the digital economy, not just the affluent. We are significantly investing in our new crypto, blockchain, and digital currencies business unit in order to help shape this more inclusive future."
MicroStrategy Talks Legal Considerations, Bitcoin for Corporations to 1,400 Public Companies
“If you are interested in the legal considerations firms face while integrating #Bitcoin
into their corporate strategy,” MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor urged, “you are not alone. We have professionals from more than 1400 firms joining us tomorrow for this discussion.”
Saylor and MicroStrategy have set the crypto universe abuzz for months, gobbling up mounds of Bitcoin in a very public and swaggering fashion. “MicroStrategy,” Saylor recently noted, has purchased approximately 295 bitcoins for $10.0 million in cash, at an average price of ~ $33,808 per #bitcoin. “We now #hodl ~ 71,079 bitcoins acquired for $1.145 billion at average price of ~ $16,109 per bitcoin.”
DeFi Pulse Tops $100 Million Market Cap
According to TokenSets, the DeFi Pulse Index (DPI), itself a capitalization-weighted index tracking the performance of decentralized financial assets, currently sits at a market cap of $103,351,546.02 (as of publication).
DPI is weighted on the value of each token’s circulating supply, tracking DeFi projects that have “significant usage” and that “show a commitment to ongoing maintenance and development.”
Its success is potentially transformative for the crypto ecosystem just in terms of the enthusiasm DeFi generates, but considering DPI has only really been rocking since Fall of last year, it’s at least clear something special is indeed happening.
By C. Edward Kelso, NBTV contributor.
Find more of Kelso’s work here: @coinfugazi / coinfugazi.com