You Won’t Believe What Congress Plans to Do With Your Crypto (It’s Not What You Think!)

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Here it comes: an edict, drafted by the omnipresent hands of the House Financial Services and Agriculture Committees—not since the committees of the Great Soviet have we seen such confident lines drawn in the feeble sand. Crypto is to be divided, much like the people, between the SEC (the stoic, silent interrogator) and the CFTC (the ever-ambitious upstart who yearns for more pie at the table). All, of course, in the name of “broadening access”—as if the babushka down the road suddenly craves to be a blockchain baroness.

The SEC, with all the gray inevitability of a Moscow winter, keeps what it knows: profit—securities, investment contracts—while the CFTC gleefully nabs those digital “commodities” and spot markets, holding them up like trophies at a rationing line. The premise? To end the years-long, mind-numbing battle of Who Watches What. In reality, the CFTC gets the lion’s share—unless, of course, a crypto “project” metamorphoses into something so decentralized and inscrutable that it loses interest to both agencies (and, possibly, everyone else).

But wait! The bill (blessed with the clarity only bureaucracy can muster) sets forth a mystical process: if a token ecosystem sheds its origin story—outgrows its “central controlling entity”—it might, provided it passes the sacred rituals of “transparency” and “utility,” slip into a jurisdictional nowhere-land. Picture large holders, hunched over their ledgers, compelled to “disclose their positions,” so that no oligarch is left unchecked in the early chaos of centralization. Never before has the act of hodling seemed so… confessional.

Retail! The very soul of the proletariat! At last, no more arbitrary “wealth tests” or “suitability” blockades to shield the masses from the early risks (and spectacular flameouts) of new ventures. Now, like waiting for bread, ordinary citizens may line up to buy their piece of vapor—direct from the source, no ID required. Decentralized protocols—just don’t hold clients’ coins or play middleman, and the regulatory wolves walk right past your cottage. 😏

Exchanges, forever the bazaars of dreams and vapor, get a gleam of order: a registration path with the CFTC and, for the daring, an “early filing system” for new tokens, so you can inform the central planners of your innovation before they declare it irrelevant. Stablecoins are defined, of course, though not roped into that unholy flock called “securities”—while the Senate, yearning for regulation, is lost in debate, pausing only when the words “Tether” and “systemic risk” echo across the chamber. (Schumer, hearing “Tether,” reportedly clutched his pearls.)

Taxation creeps in on padded feet. Some whisper of “de minimis” exemptions (as if the IRS ever let go of free lunch) for small crypto transactions; perhaps one day your digital coins will buy cabbage soup without a knock on the door. Meanwhile, industry calls, lawmakers plot, and everyone waits for the next round of “broader digital asset regulation.” It’s a brave new world—just don’t expect it to be a fair one.

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2025-05-06 10:46