In recent years, the federal government has aggressively targeted crypto firms, projects, and exchanges. Attacks on the industry have come from all directions, including lawmakers, bank regulators, the Treasury Department, the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Representative Brad Sherman says, “Bitcoin, it’s not just for narco-terrorists anymore . . . it’s for tax evaders too.”1 According to SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, “The crypto industry’s record of failures, frauds, and bankruptcies is . . . because many players in the crypto industry don’t play by the rules.”2
Listening to politicians and the mainstream media, one might think that the crypto industry deserves this. Yes, the industry has its share of scammers and fraudsters. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, for example, diverted billions from his exchange’s customers to cover risky investments at his hedge fund, Alameda Research, leading to FTX’s collapse. Convicted on several counts of fraud and conspiracy, he was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. The government, however, isn’t just going after fraudsters such as Bankman-Fried (as it should); it has declared war on the entire industry.
Why should we care?
One need not know the ins and outs of crypto assets (digital tokens, currencies, stablecoins), decentralized finance (DeFi), decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN), or blockchains—the technology on which crypto assets are based—to know that these technologies are integral to what promises to be the next generation of the internet: Web3.3 In the current version of the internet, Web 2.0, the most used services and platforms are centralized, meaning controlled by a handful of big tech firms. Although these firms deserve immense credit for creating extraordinary search engines, cloud services, social media platforms, and more, Web 2.0 presents many challenges. Users often lack control of their data and ownership of the content they create. Security vulnerabilities and single points of failure, moreover, are inevitable with centralized data storage, leading to hacks, cyberattacks, and other disruptions. Web 2.0 is also easy for governments to surveil, control, and censor.
The pioneers of Web3 envision a decentralized internet that solves these challenges, an internet that is more open, secure, and private. Users will control their data, content, and interactions without needing permission from third parties. The economic value of open-source platforms for gaming, social media, and more will be represented by tradable, digital tokens. Such tokens and other crypto assets will enable their owners to make low-cost, peer-to-peer payments—as well as trade, lend, and borrow—without traditional intermediaries, such as banks.
Representative Ro Khanna, whose district includes Silicon Valley, says, “Web 3.0 will lead to unprecedented job growth and empower Americans to have economic ownership over the internet.”4 This is an exciting prospect that represents what is great about entrepreneurship: innovation, economic dynamism, and disruptive new industries. All this rests on protecting the individual’s right to be free—free to try something different, free to envision a better future, and free to turn that vision into a reality.
American entrepreneurs could (and should) easily lead the crypto industry, building the infrastructure for Web3. But if the government wins its war on crypto, violating the rights of users, investors, and creators, it will drive the industry offshore—and all of us will be harmed because of it.
One part of this war is a coordinated effort by various government agencies to illegally de-bank crypto firms, forcing banks to close the accounts of these firms and refrain from serving them.5 Without banking services, running a business today is nearly impossible. (In the future, if Web3 comes to fruition, firms might not need banks to operate, but that’s not the case now.) Firms need banks to manage cash flow, access lines of credit, and accept payments from customers. They also need banks to pay expenses, including taxes and employee salaries.
Venture capitalist Nic Carter has called this effort to de-bank crypto firms “Operation Choke Point 2.0.”6 The original Operation Choke Point, an Obama administration program, pressured banks to avoid politically unfavorable yet legal businesses, including firearms dealers and payday lenders.7 Whereas the government imposed this program covertly, it is imposing Choke Point 2.0 openly, through rulemaking, written guidance, public statements, and regulatory pressure. In January 2023, for example, the Federal Reserve (Fed), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) warned banks that working with crypto firms or holding crypto assets “is highly likely to be inconsistent with safe and sound banking practices.”8 The White House National Economic Council, too, stressed “the imperative of separating risky digital assets from the banking system.”9
Regulators say they want to separate the two because crypto is fraught with risks, such as fraud, legal uncertainties (caused mainly by the SEC, as we will see), lack of oversight, price volatility, and more. Although crypto, like any industry, has risks, pressuring banks to shun the sector is wrong. Banks should be free to assess these risks on a case-by-case basis and decide accordingly.
But if we look at the regulators’ actions rather than their words, separating crypto from banks is not about safeguarding the banking system; it’s about suffocating the crypto industry.
As the 2023 regional bank crisis unfolded, Choke Point 2.0 went into overdrive.10 The Fed provided liquidity through the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP). Although this saved most troubled banks, four were shut down: Silicon Valley Bank, Silvergate Bank, Signature Bank, and First Republic Bank. The first three serviced crypto firms.
Signature Bank is noteworthy. On Sunday, March 12, the New York Department of Financial Services transferred control of the bank to the FDIC—even though Signature wasn’t insolvent. Further, other banks in similar and worse positions, such as PacWest, were given time to tap the BTFP to save themselves. Barney Frank, Signature board member and former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said, “If they’d allowed us to open on Monday, we would have been in good shape; we would have been operational.”11
Shuttering a solvent bank, regulators wiped out Signature’s shareholders (the bank’s owners) to the tune of $4.4 billion. Why? According to Frank, they wanted “to send the message that even though we were doing crypto stuff responsibly, they don’t want banks doing crypto.”12 A few days later, Reuters reported that any buyer of Signature had to agree to divest the bank’s crypto business.13 The FDIC denied this, yet when Flagstar Bank bought Signature, the crypto business was excluded, supporting Frank’s claim.14 After these bank closures, Majority Whip Tom Emmer sent a letter to the FDIC inquiring about regulators “weaponizing recent instability in the banking sector to purge legal crypto activity from the U.S.”15
Whereas bank regulators are targeting the crypto industry indirectly, the SEC is targeting it directly. Under Chairman Gensler, the Commission has initiated more than one hundred enforcement actions against crypto firms: twenty in 2021, thirty in 2022, forty-six in 2023, and several more this year.16 It alleges that crypto firms are illegally offering unregistered securities (financial assets) or operating unregistered exchanges. “Unregistered,” in this context, means that the SEC has not granted them permission to operate. Gensler’s message to the industry, stated repeatedly, has been, “Come in and register.” But the Commission’s actions contradict this message. Those in the industry consistently argue that they can’t register, in part because the SEC refuses to provide specific guidance on what crypto assets can be registered.
Testifying at a House Agriculture Committee hearing, Dan Gallagher, chief legal officer at Robinhood, said,
When Chair Gensler at the SEC, in 2021, said “Come in and register,” we did. We actually came in, and we did it proactively. . . . We went through a 16-month process with the SEC staff trying to register a special purpose broker/dealer, and then we were pretty summarily told in March that that process was over, and we would not see any fruits of that effort.17
Other crypto firms, too, have tried to engage with the SEC, only to be met with silence—then lawsuits. In 2022, Coinbase, the largest crypto exchange in America, petitioned the SEC for regulatory clarity, requesting a new set of rules, as existing securities laws don’t apply cleanly to crypto assets. The SEC denied the petition. Coinbase also asked for guidance on its products, services, and business, meeting with SEC representatives more than thirty times in nine months, yet the SEC provided no feedback. Paul Grewal, chief legal officer of Coinbase, concluded, “The SEC will not let crypto companies ‘come in and register’—we tried.”18
After snubbing Coinbase, the SEC sued the exchange in June 2023. It alleges that Coinbase is operating an unregistered securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency while allowing trading of more than a dozen crypto-asset securities. The SEC further alleges that Coinbase’s staking-as-a-service program, which enables users to earn passive income on their crypto assets, is also an unregistered security.
The SEC has also imposed several enforcement actions against Kraken, another top crypto exchange. In February 2023, the SEC charged Kraken with failing to register its staking-as-a-service program. Kraken settled without admitting wrongdoing, agreeing to close its staking program for U.S. customers and pay $30 million in fines and penalties. Discussing the settlement on CNBC, Gensler claimed, “Kraken [and] others know how to register. It’s just a form on our website. . . . And if they want to offer staking, we’re neutral. Come in, register, because investors need that disclosure.”19
How Gensler said this with a straight face is anyone’s guess. The reality is that registering a security entails a long, back-and-forth process with the SEC, involving significant legal and accounting costs, as well as detailed filings and disclosures—and that’s when the SEC is playing nice. Kraken cofounder Jesse Powell mockingly responded to Gensler on X, “Oh man, all I had to do was fill out a form on a website and tell people that staking rewards come from staking? Wish I’d seen this video before paying a $30m fine and agreeing to permanently shut down the service in the US.”20
By November, the SEC was back for more, again suing Kraken for operating an unregistered securities exchange, among other alleged violations. Expressing his frustration, Powell said,
Message is clear: $30m buys you about 10 months before the SEC comes around to extort you again. Lawyers can do a lot with $30m but the SEC knows that a real fight will likely cost $100m+, and valuable time. If you can’t afford it, get your crypto company out of the US warzone.21
As Powell indicates, bigger firms such as Kraken and Coinbase might withstand the SEC’s onslaughts. But smaller crypto firms, projects, and startups that can’t afford the ruinous legal costs are doomed.
As if this isn’t alarming enough, consider the SEC’s pursuit of DEBT Box. The SEC sued the firm, accusing it of fraud. After presenting evidence to the U.S. District Court of Utah, the SEC secured a temporary restraining order (TRO) and froze DEBT Box’s assets. In securing the TRO, however, SEC lawyers lied to the court, got caught, then lied again to cover up their first lies. Sanctioning the SEC for “egregious misconduct” and “gross abuse of power,” Judge Robert J. Shelby dismissed the case against DEBT Box and ordered the SEC to pay $1.8 million to cover the firm’s legal fees and other costs.22
As the actions of the SEC and bank regulators illustrate, those in the crypto industry are not facing honest, good-faith actors; they’re facing lawless, authoritarian bullies hell-bent on destroying them.
Even two of the SEC’s own commissioners, Hester Peirce and Mark Uyeda, oppose its enforcement actions against the crypto industry. After the SEC settled with another exchange, ShapeShift, for operating as an unregistered securities dealer, Peirce and Uyeda dissented, noting that “the Commission does not allege any harm,” and “the Order nowhere alleges that ShapeShift defrauded its customers.”23 Because of the ambiguity the SEC is perpetuating, Peirce and Uyeda imagine a scenario in which a future ShapeShift tries to “come in and register”:
Future ShapeShift (FSS): Hello, I would like to register as a dealer.
SEC: Why?
FSS: Because I think some of the assets that I plan to deal might be deemed at some point by the SEC to be securities.
SEC: Which ones?
FSS: I’m not sure because I can’t really understand what criteria you use to decide whether a token offering is a securities transaction and, if it is, whether the token that was the subject of the investment contract remains a security in secondary market transactions.
SEC: Well, if you don’t know whether you’re dealing in securities, you can’t register. And by the way, if some of the assets you’re dealing in are not securities, you also can’t register.
FSS: So, can you help us think through which assets are securities?
SEC: No. We suggest that you read the 2017 DAO [Decentralized Autonomous Organization] report, and it will all be clear to you. You can also look at our enforcement actions if you want.
FSS: I read it, and I’ve read about your enforcement actions. I still have questions.
SEC: Hire a lawyer.
FSS: I did, and the lawyer has even more questions.
SEC: Sorry, we cannot help any more than we already have. We don’t give legal advice.24
Many in the crypto industry have already experienced this. Austin Campbell, founder of Zero Knowledge Consulting, wrote, “If you think this is a joke, I have been in a meeting with the SEC where almost exactly this happened.”25 According to crypto lawyer Jason Gottlieb, this “is absolutely right—including their ‘script’ for what happens in ‘I’d like to register’ meetings, which is a VERY accurate version of how these meetings go.”26
In their dissent, Peirce and Uyeda conclude, “Cases like this do not protect investors; they intimidate innovators and entrepreneurs.”27 This is not hyperbole. Businessman Mark Cuban recently posted on X that he will forgo any “investment opportunity that is going to release a token . . . because the SEC will not allow it to operate. The cost in time and legal fees to attempt to register and comply make it impossible.”28
As if the SEC hasn’t created enough headaches for the crypto industry, Senator Elizabeth Warren demands more. While praising Gensler as “the right leader to get the job done,” she says the SEC should “use the full force of its regulatory powers across the entirety of the crypto market.”29 The Commission, Warren continues, must “double down,” but it “is not the only regulator with a responsibility to rein in the industry’s worst tendencies. . . . All our regulators need to get in the game.”30
Positioning herself as the industry’s leading critic in Congress, Warren posted a short campaign video on X that includes the Politico headline, “Elizabeth Warren is Building an Anti-Crypto Army.”31 Claiming they want to combat illicit crypto use, her army has proposed the Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act (DAAMLA).32 This bill would impose strict anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) requirements on crypto miners, validators, and wallet providers. These parties secure, support, and maintain crypto networks—but they don’t have contact with crypto users or know their identities, making it impossible to comply with AML/KYC requirements.
This would severely cripple the industry, amounting to a de facto ban on most of it. Coin Center director Neeraj Agrawal says DAAMLA “is a direct attack on technological progress and also a direct attack on our personal privacy and autonomy.”33
To garner support for her bill, Warren has spewed endless myths about crypto while sending more than a dozen letters to regulators, lawmakers, and industry leaders. After Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023, Warren sent a letter to the White House asking how it planned to stop crypto financing for terrorism.34 Signed by more than a hundred members of Congress, the letter cited a Wall Street Journal article asserting that Hamas had raised $130 million in crypto donations.35 But according to blockchain analytics firms Elliptic and Chainalysis, the Journal misinterpreted the data.36 “There is no evidence,” Elliptic responded, “to support the assertion that Hamas has received significant volumes of crypto donations.”37
Six months before Warren’s letter, Hamas announced that it had stopped asking for Bitcoin donations due to concerns about U.S. and Israeli authorities tracking its donors.38 Contrary to popular belief, crypto is not inherently anonymous; most crypto transactions are public. As Chainalysis points out,
The unique transparency inherent in blockchain technology makes cryptocurrency particularly traceable and thus less suitable for illicit activities, including financing terrorism. Indeed, government agencies and private sector organizations armed with the right blockchain analysis solutions can collaborate to identify and disrupt the flow of funds—a feat not easily achievable with traditional forms of value transfer.39
Refusing to let facts disrupt her narrative, Warren swiftly moved on without acknowledging the error. She continues to bash crypto, claiming offenders use it to traffic drugs, buy child porn, evade sanctions, fund weapons programs for rogue nations, and more. But severely restricting Americans’ crypto use, as Warren’s bill proposes, will not stop its illicit use abroad. One can only speculate why she fixates on crypto when the currency of choice for most terrorists, drug traffickers, and money launderers is the U.S. dollar.
Although DAAMLA is unlikely to pass soon, Warren has an anti-crypto ally in the Treasury Department: Secretary Janet Yellen. While Congress debated the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), the crypto industry protested a provision that redefined “broker” for tax reporting purposes. The expanded definition would include crypto miners, validators, and node operators. The problem—like Warren’s proposed expansion of AML/KYC requirements—is that these parties can’t report the required information because they don’t have it. Responding to this concern, a group of senators proposed an amendment to narrow the definition of broker to exclude these parties. But the amendment failed. Why? Because Yellen lobbied behind the scenes to quash it.40
The IRS has proposed rules for the IIJA’s expanded definition of broker, which will take effect in 2025. Pushing back, the Blockchain Association submitted a detailed comment letter, explaining that “DeFi participants are fundamentally unable to comply” and that the proposed rules “reflect fundamental misunderstandings about the nature of digital assets and decentralized technology.”41 Recently announcing the final regulations, the Treasury and IRS excluded DeFi for now because they need “more time to consider the nuances of transactions involving non-custodial and decentralized brokers,” but they “intend to provide rules for these brokers in a different set of final regulations.”42
Besides imposing infeasible tax reporting requirements, the Treasury, aligned with Warren, supposedly seeks to curb illicit crypto use. Yellen alleges that crypto is “used, at least in transactions sense [sic], mainly for illicit financing and I think we really need to examine ways in which we can curtail their use and make sure that anti-money laundering [sic] doesn’t occur through those channels.”43 On the contrary, crypto is not used “mainly” for illicit financing, as the percentage of crypto transactions for such activity is less than 0.5 percent.44
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), however, has targeted crypto “mixers,” which are decentralized, open-source protocols that provide transactional privacy. A mixer enables users to pool their crypto assets, mix them, then distribute them to new crypto addresses, a process that obscures the origins and ownership of the funds. OFAC has sanctioned several mixers, including Tornado Cash, for their alleged role in laundering proceeds from cybercrimes and facilitating transactions for sanctioned entities such as North Korea’s Lazarus Group.45
Sanctioning crypto mixers is an unprecedented move: Sanctions have traditionally been placed on nations, individuals, or organizations. But Tornado Cash is none of these—it’s not a person, a group, or a company. OFAC, for the first time, has sanctioned autonomous, open-source software. Although some people use crypto mixers for illicit purposes, this is not a valid reason to ban all Americans from using a legitimate tool to preserve their privacy. Despite this, sanctioned foreign actors are still using Tornado Cash.46
Crypto mixers have also drawn the ire of the DOJ. Roman Storm and Roman Semenov, the founders of Tornado Cash, were charged with conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The DOJ has similarly charged Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill, the founders of Samourai Wallet.
These charges are unwarranted for many reasons. The Bank Secrecy Act defines money transmitting as “accepting currency, funds, or value that substitutes for currency and transmitting the currency, funds, or value that substitutes for currency by any means.”47 Tornado Cash and Samourai Wallet do not meet this definition. Neither takes possession or custodial control of user funds at any point in the mixing process, so they’ve never “accepted” anything. Yet the DOJ has argued that a money transmitter need not have control over the transferred funds.48 Under this strained interpretation, many businesses could be considered money transmitters that obviously aren’t, including internet service providers, cell phone manufacturers, and the creators of operating systems. None of them accept or control funds, but if someone uses his cell phone to transfer money, then on the DOJ’s “logic,” all these businesses helped facilitate the “transmission” of that money.
The DOJ’s charges also contradict a 2014 administrative ruling in which the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) declared, “The production and distribution of software, in and of itself, does not constitute acceptance and transmission of value, even if the purpose of the software is to facilitate the sale of virtual currency.”49 Additional guidance from FinCEN in 2019 states that an “anonymizing software provider is not a money transmitter.”50
Recognizing these problems, Senators Ron Wyden and Cynthia Lummis sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, expressing
grave concerns regarding the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) recent policy arguments that dramatically expand the scope of the Federal prohibition on operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. The DOJ’s unprecedented interpretation of this statute in the context of non-custodial crypto asset software services contradicts the clear intent of Congress and the authoritative guidance of . . . FinCEN.51
The DOJ is prosecuting software developers not for any crimes they have committed but for crimes others have committed while using the software—which the developers have no control over. This is like charging Apple executives because terrorists use iPhones. Crypto mixers, tokens, and wallets, like smartphones and laptops, are tools that criminals inevitably will use. The answer is not to ban the tools or prosecute their creators but to go after the real criminals.
By criminalizing privacy-preserving software, the DOJ and Treasury have overstepped the Constitution. We have seen this movie before. In the 1990s, the government deemed encryption software a threat to law enforcement and national security. Severely restricting its use and export, the government effectively banned it from being shared online.52 These restrictions were challenged in Bernstein v. United States (1996). The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that computer code is protected speech under the First Amendment.53 “This court can find no meaningful difference between computer language, particularly high-level languages as defined above, and German or French. . . . Computer language is just that, language, and it communicates information either to a computer or to those who can read it.”54
Considering all the facts—that illicit crypto use is minor, that sanctioning crypto mixers is futile, that developers are not the real criminals—it’s likely that the stated goal of Warren, the DOJ, and the Treasury to combat illicit crypto use is just a pretext to suppress all crypto use.
Despite everything the government has hurled at it, the crypto industry has won some small victories. In the SEC’s lawsuit against Ripple Labs, the judge ruled that the firm’s sales of its token (XRP) on crypto exchanges did not violate securities laws. In the case against Coinbase, the judge granted the firm’s motion to dismiss the SEC’s claim that its self-custodial wallet (Coinbase Wallet) acted as an unregistered broker. For years, the SEC had denied asset managers permission to issue a Bitcoin exchange-traded product (ETP, a financial vehicle that holds assets, such as commodities, and is traded on stock exchanges). Regarding Grayscale’s lawsuit against the SEC, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that rejecting the firm’s ETP application was “arbitrary and capricious.”55 As a result, the SEC grudgingly approved several Bitcoin ETPs, and it recently approved Ethereum ETPs as well. (Ethereum is the second-largest crypto asset behind Bitcoin.)
These victories, however, are overshadowed by the chilling effect of the war on crypto. Fewer projects are launching while existing projects are shuttering or moving offshore. After the DOJ’s indictment of Samourai Wallet’s founders, for example, Incognito Wallet and LocalMonero decided to shut down.56 Meanwhile, zkSNACKs and Acinq announced that U.S. citizens are now prohibited from using their self-custodial wallets (Wasabi Wallet and Phoenix Wallet, respectively).57
The government’s illegal de-bankings, unprecedented sanctions, unwarranted prosecutions, and endless, indiscriminate enforcement actions have sent a clear message to crypto innovators: You are not welcome here. Rather than allow a young, burgeoning industry to develop, the government aims to crush it.
This should alarm everyone. If we value innovation, entrepreneurship, and technological progress, as we should, then we must defend crypto entrepreneurs’ moral right to be free.
Further, we must condemn this war as reckless and unjust. Reckless, because it is subverting the rule of law, sidestepping the Constitution, and effectively handing over leadership of this industry to competitors in rival nations. Unjust, because it is not only trampling privacy and free speech rights; it is persecuting the creators, developers, and entrepreneurs trying to build a better internet, a better financial system, and a better future.
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Endnotes
1. Brad Sherman (@BradSherman), “Perhaps you can make money and hurt your country at the same time—and perhaps some Members of Congress will applaud your efforts. Here’s the real picture.” X, April 15, 2021, https://x.com/BradSherman/status/1382871291443699714.
2. Gary Gensler, “Statement on the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act,” U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, May 22, 2024, https://www.sec.gov/news/statement/gensler-21st-century-act-05222024.
3. “What Is Web3?” Ethereum, March 1, 2024, https://ethereum.org/en/web3/.
4. Ro Khanna, “Khanna, McHenry Lead Bipartisan Legislative Fix for New Digital Asset Reporting Requirements,” U.S. House of Representatives, November 18, 2021, https://khanna.house.gov/media/press-releases/khanna-mchenry-lead-bipartisan-legislative-fix-new-digital-asset-reporting.
5. David H. Thompson et al., “Operation Choke Point 2.0: The Federal Bank Regulators Come for Crypto,” Cooper & Kirk, https://www.cooperkirk.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Operation-Choke-Point-2.0.pdf (accessed July 24, 2024).
6. Nic Carter, “Operation Choke Point 2.0 is Underway, and Crypto is in Its Crosshairs,” Pirate Wires, February 8, 2023, https://www.piratewires.com/p/crypto-choke-point.
7. “The Department of Justice’s ‘Operation Choke Point’: Illegally Choking Off Legitimate Businesses?” U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, May 29, 2014, http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Staff-Report-Operation-Choke-Point1.pdf.
8. “Joint Statement on Crypto-Asset Risks to Banking Organizations,” Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, January 3, 2023, https://www.fdic.gov/news/press-releases/2023/pr23002a.pdf.
9. Brian Deese et al., “The Administration’s Roadmap to Mitigate Cryptocurrencies’ Risks,” White House National Economic Council, January 27, 2023, https://www.whitehouse.gov/nec/briefing-room/2023/01/27/the-administrations-roadmap-to-mitigate-cryptocurrencies-risks/.
10. Nic Carter, “Did the Government Start a Global Financial Crisis in an Attempt to Destroy Crypto?” Pirate Wires, March 23, 2023, https://www.piratewires.com/p/2023-banking-crisis.
11. Jen Wieczner, “Barney Frank Talks More about the Surprise Shuttering of Signature Bank,” Intelligencer, March 15, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/03/barney-frank-says-more-shuttering-signature-bank.html.
12. Wieczner, “Barney Frank Talks More about the Surprise Shuttering of Signature Bank.”
13. David French and Pete Schroeder, “Exclusive: U.S. Regulator Eyes Friday Bids for SVB, Signature Bank—Sources,” Reuters, March 16, 2023, https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/us-regulator-taps-piper-sandler-new-bid-sell-silicon-valley-bank-sources-2023-03-15/.
14. Leo Jakobson, “Signature’s Seized Assets Sold without Crypto—Here’s Why It Matters,” Yahoo Finance, March 21, 2023, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/signatures-seized-assets-sold-without-105833351.html.
15. Tom Emmer (@GOPMajorityWhip), “Today, I sent a letter to FDIC Chairman Gruenberg regarding reports that the FDIC is weaponizing recent instability in the banking sector to purge legal crypto . . . ,” X, March 15, 2023, https://x.com/GOPMajorityWhip/status/1636008298481680384.
16. “SEC Cryptocurrency Enforcement,” Cornerstone Research, January 24, 2024, https://www.cornerstone.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/SEC-Cryptocurrency-Enforcement-2023-Update.pdf.
17. “The Future of Digital Assets: Providing Clarity for Digital Asset Spot Markets,” hearing before the Committee on Agriculture House of Representatives, June 6, 2023, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-118hhrg53287/pdf/CHRG-118hhrg53287.pdf.
18. Paul Grewal, “We asked the SEC for reasonable crypto rules for Americans. We got legal threats instead,” Coinbase, March 22, 2023, https://www.coinbase.com/blog/we-asked-the-sec-for-reasonable-crypto-rules-for-americans-we-got-legal.
19. “SEC’s Gary Gensler on Kraken staking settlement: Other crypto platforms should take note of this,” CNBC, February 10, 2023, https://www.cnbc.com/video/2023/02/10/short-sec-chair-gensler-heres-why-we-cracked-down-on-kraken.html.
20. Jesse Powell (@jespow), “Oh man, all I had to do was fill out a form on a website and tell people that staking rewards come from staking? Wish I’d seen this video before paying a $30m . . . ,” X, February 10, 2023, https://x.com/jespow/status/1624177588074848256.
21. Jesse Powell (@jespow), “Message is clear: $30m buys you about 10 months before the SEC comes around to extort you again. Lawyers can do a lot with $30m but the SEC knows that a real . . .” X, November 20, 2023, https://x.com/jespow/status/1726794688433369290.
22. Brayden Lindrea, “SEC hit with sanctions for its ‘gross abuse of power’ in Debt Box case,” Cointelegraph, March 18, 2024, https://cointelegraph.com/news/sec-s-conduct-in-debtbox-case-constituted-a-gross-abuse-of-power; Securities and Exchange Commission v. Digital Licensing Inc, et al., Case No. 2:23-cv-00482-RJS-DBP (United States District Court for the District of Utah 2024), https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.utd.141167/gov.uscourts.utd.141167.313.0_22.pdf and https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.utd.141167/gov.uscourts.utd.141167.312.0.pdf.
23. Hester M. Peirce and Mark T. Uyeda, “On Today’s Episode of As the Crypto World Turns: Statement on ShapeShift AG,” U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, March 5, 2024, https://www.sec.gov/news/statement/peirce-uyeda-statement-a-crypto-world-turns-03-06-24.
24. Peirce and Uyeda, “On Today’s Episode of As the Crypto World Turns.”
25. Austin Campbell (@CampbellJAustin), “If you think this is a joke, I have been in a meeting with the SEC where almost exactly this happened. $100s of millions of investment money and tons of high . . . ,” X, March 6, 2024, https://x.com/CampbellJAustin/status/1765428035132784973.
26. Jason Gottlieb (@ohaiom), “This dissent from Commissioners @HesterPeirce and Mark Uyeda is absolutely right—including their ‘script’ for what happens in ‘I’d like to register’ meetings . . . ,” X, March 6, 2024, https://x.com/ohaiom/status/1765391859226919375.
27. Peirce and Uyeda, “On Today’s Episode of As the Crypto World Turns.”
28. Mark Cuban (@mcuban), “This is how @GaryGensler and the SEC are trying to destroy the crypto industry. They make it impossible to comply with registration rules. Since the SEC decided . . . ,” X, May 11, 2024, https://x.com/mcuban/status/1789297645653037194.
29. Economic Liberties, “Confronting the Crypto Challenge: Learning from a Meltdown Featuring Senator Elizabeth Warren,” YouTube, 10:36–10:56, January 25, 2023, https://youtu.be/3OnR2qHvmVA?t=636.
30. Economic Liberties, “Confronting the Crypto Challenge: Learning from a Meltdown Featuring Senator Elizabeth Warren,” YouTube, 11:05–11:45, January 25, 2023, https://youtu.be/3OnR2qHvmVA?t=665.
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