You mean as in passing regulation drafted by SBF, the dude running the biggest crypto ponzi exposed so far, which would have allowed him to capture a hefty chunk of crypto exchanges market through regulatory capture?
The chief lobbyist of FTX was an ex-CFTC commissioner regularly meeting with the SEC and the CFTC.
Here are the very words of US Congressman:
https://twitter.com/RepTomEmmer
"Interesting. @GaryGensler runs to the media while reports to my office allege he was helping SBF and FTX work on legal loopholes to obtain a regulatory monopoly. We're looking into this."
I also read this: "Four U.S. lawmakers have accused the SEC under Chairman Gary Gensler of "regulatory hypocrisy and inconsistency."
So it looks like the "billionaire financiers" may not be the only ones to blame.
We're not just talking about "regulation interfering with the free market". We're talking about regulatory capture by the biggest fraudster since Madoff.
Every single US politician can be rightly accused of this. It doesn't mean much in a country where you are expected to solicit literal bribes every couple of years and a job at a place you were regulating is an expectation.
Crypto is a swamp of projects that will take your money and spin you a story about getting rich and inevitably rugpull you. It's full of centralized exchanges that are shady and exploitative in the best case and downright scams in the worst case.
It's also full of people who fundamentally believe that permissionless programmable money is something that could fundamentally change the world and passionately chase the goal of making it better every day.
Those projects are still risky because technology is never perfect and that's a big deal when it's moving large amounts of value from place to place but if you can tolerate the risk the potential for long-term benefit is there.
It's also full of people who have no idea what "permissionless programmable money" is or what the consequences of it are, but line goes up so they convince themselves they understand and "fundamentally believe" in it because they have a direct financial incentive for line to keep going up.
I would wager the ratio of these people to those who actually understand the fundamental economics of cryptocurrencies is significantly greater than 1,000:1.