The Anti-Crypto Letter to US Congress and What it Means
Patrick Thompson of CoinGeek reported Monday that 26 computer scientists, software engineers, and technologists wrote a letter to the U.S. Congress and congressional committees urging them to “take a critical, skeptical approach toward industry claims that crypto-assets are an innovative technology that is unreservedly good.”
That letter was actually written June 1. But weeks later there may be reason to take it more seriously.
"The sentiment around the digital asset is low, and lobbying efforts against proof-of-work (PoW) digital currency mining are at an all-time high," he writes.
“The lobbying efforts on behalf of various interests do seem to be growing, on one side you have those advocating a more open atmosphere and pushing for further understanding of these emerging technologies and on the other side, you have a mix of efforts that either promote or condemn a specific consensus mechanism, chain or crypto-related organization,” said Bryan Daugherty the Public Policy Director for BSV Blockchain.
“These focused efforts range from environmental and energy consumption impact of mining operations to consumer protection concerns due to the use of blockchain technology to create unregulated securities, Ponzi schemes, and other get rich quick rackets. These lobbyist efforts are commissioned by a variety of sources, including well-intentioned scientists, competing blockchains with alternative but less secure consensus models, consumer financial protection agencies, and environmentalists,” he added.
Thompson notes the main arguments lodged against blockchain per that letter:
"Digital asset transactions can’t be reversed, that public ledgers make it challenging to preserve financial privacy, that digital assets threaten financial stability because they are volatile, that PoW mining is energy-intensive, and that “blockchain technologies facilitate few, if any, real-economy uses.”
Thompson argues that each of these assertions are too generalized. He points out that blockchain protocols such as that utilized by BSV strive to solve a number of the issues that the group is concerned about.
He adds that: "BSV relies on the law to reverse illegal transactions, has security solutions that can obfuscate sensitive data on the public ledger, has stablecoin solutions to curb volatility, has unlimited block sizes, which make it more energy efficient, and has companies building and shipping real-world solutions which nullify the narratives surrounding real-economy uses."
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
