Everything in the article leads me to believe this only threatens the “cryptocurrency” industry, but I don’t have the actual text to the amendment. Is anything threatening “crypto” itself?
I think the simpler answer is that when a word has two meanings, one a widely used category of financial instruments and the other a narrowly defined branch of advanced mathematics, the former will almost always dominate everyday discussion.
That's not even the original meaning. According to etymology section on wiktionary, it dates back to middle french and latin, before issac newton was even born.
>the following categories do not count as brokers:
>(A) validating distributed ledger transactions
>(B) selling hardware or software for which the sole function is to permit a person to control private keys which are used for accessing digital assets on a distributed ledger, or
>(C) developing digital assets or their cor- responding protocols for use by other persons, provided that such other persons are not cus- tomers of the person developing such assets or protocols.
> responsible for and regularly providing any service effectuating transfers of digital assets
(incidentally, I don't see how category (B) or even category (C) from Wyden's amendment could be reasonable construed as being included in the original text--those are products not services. I will concede that I can see how category (A) can be construed, although I doubt it would be so construed).
[Also note that "digital assets" is defined elsewhere in the amendment, although the news media didn't report on the precise text for digital asset, so I don't have it handy. But it's basically a reasonable definition.]