In recent months, anger over the US government's growing hostility towards cryptocurrencies has perhaps understandably taken on a partisan tone, with many industry leaders laying the blame at the feet of individual Democrats. president biden, senator elizabeth warrenChairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission Gary Gensler.
But Ethereum co-founder Joe Rubin sees things differently. For him, the root cause of the cryptocurrency crisis in America may not be the fault of any individual political actor or even one political party.
“We might even surpass that,” Rubin said in an exclusive interview. Decryption. “There may be some organization behind this, possibly related to the banking lobbies.”
Rubin believes that cryptocurrencies and decentralization pose an existential threat to the global influence that the American state has long enjoyed in conjunction with traditional finance. Therefore, he speculates, there may be bipartisan forces representing America's long-term global interests behind the country's accelerating resistance to cryptocurrencies.
There are no reactions to this idea. some famous people In the cryptocurrency industry, it is expressed as “.”Operation Chokepoint 2.0” was popularized by Nic Carter, Partner at Castle Island Ventures.The theory is that there is Coordinated efforts At the federal level, and perhaps even beyond the federal level, it is making it very difficult for cryptocurrency companies to do business.
The speculative agenda borrows its name from something very real.operation choke point” From 2013 to 2017, the Justice Department sought to illegally cut off payday lenders and gun dealers from banking services. Is the same thing happening now with virtual currencies? Rubin says it may be bigger than that.
“It's clear that the United States prefers to operate from the top down and to control the world as much as possible, especially through financial intermediaries,” Rubin said. “This technology does not guarantee that bank holding companies will maintain their advantage over the long term.”
“So maybe it goes deeper,” he added.
In Mr. Rubin's view, the so-called “clash of civilizations” between decentralization advocates like himself and the entrenched American establishment was always inevitable. From that perspective, he stated the current state of the SEC as follows: assault Nothing too surprising or unusual when it comes to the cryptocurrency industry.
Last month, Rubin founded Ethereum software company ConsenSys. preemptive lawsuit Dispute Regulatory Reports with the SEC position Buying and selling ETH amounts to an illegal offering of unregistered securities. Rubin previously Said If the SEC wins this case, he said, it would “bring an end to the Ethereum blockchain in the United States.” (Disclosure: ConsenSys Decryption. )
There are a few caveats as far as Rubin's theory about Wall Street's behind-the-scenes maneuvers in crypto's current woes are concerned. First, he says, it's just speculation. And second, traditional financial institutions have not been completely opposed to blockchain innovation. major bank hugged Spot Bitcoin ETFand many more are on the list Spot Ethereum ETF.
However, Rubin says that making profits from crypto ETFs is far from supporting true decentralization. Wall Street companies will be able to easily get rich with Bitcoin ETFs, while at the same time fighting to prevent companies like ConsenSys from building a decentralized future.
“They can all do well with this technology,” he said. “That doesn't mean they don't want to perpetuate this system as long as they can.”
