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Comment by LatteLazy | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, we need decent regs for Crypto. It's not even rocket science, we're just stuck between 2 extremist camps: "ban everything" and "regs are evil" camps.

I hoped FTX would lead to basic common sense stuff but it hasn't...

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The problem is that if you regulate crypto enough to stamp out the blatant scams, fraud and self-dealing then it loses most of its appeal over other financial products.

But traditional finance is the way it is today because of all the lessons learned. Lessons that crypto bros are speed running through.

"The problem is that if you regulate crypto enough to stamp out the blatant scams, fraud and self-dealing then it loses most of its appeal over other financial products."

I'm guessing you're pro-crypto, but this would be a better position for the opposition.

You guessed wrong. I was probably too subtle.

"financial products"

This threw me.

> Yeah, we need decent regs for Crypto

Yes and they already exist. They are the existing financial regulations for everything else. The only difference has been a lack of enforcement.

I don't get why we haven't seen the SEC or the CFTC step to the plate with this. I'm already seeing a number of blockchain projects moving offshore, whether to the Cayman Islands or El Salvador, not because of favorable regulatory environments per say but just because the US is so opaque and murky with regards to this.

I think the US has somehow failed to protect investors AND managed to discourage companies from setting up there. It's the worst of all worlds. How much blame sits with the SEC for selective (and poor) enforcement and how much with Congress (for letting Gensler be so poor at his job) is an open question...

No, fuck all these takes. Every crypto bro has spent the past decade screaming about crypto being free of regulation and going to overturn the dollar as the most important currency and explicitly that regulation of money in the US is THE problem that caused 2008 and every sadness since the 70s.

You do NOT get to turn around now and get bailed out by my tax dollars. You got exactly what you wanted, and everyone told you this is exactly what would happen. Deal with the consequences of ignoring good advice.

Nobody in crypto was investing, they were gambling.

>Every crypto bro...

>You do NOT get to turn around now and get bailed out by my tax dollars.

Quite a useless generalization. Self custodied decentralized commodities like bitcoin and centralized corporate created/run crypto securities are vastly different as far as required government involvement is concerned.

The SEC should be more forthcoming in providing clarity to institutions creating securities and centralized services instead of playing a weird gotcha game while maintaining a high level of opaqueness.

Any business committing fraud, violating securities or custody laws in the US should get penalized and the clients have the right to claw back remaining funds regardless of their personal economic views.

If crypto was actually free of regulation that would be a perfectly acceptable tradeoff, but it clearly isn't. Sometimes projects get boned for no reason with no instructive guidelines, often to the point they even would have been better off just ignoring the feds.

The US Gov taking a hands off position — "none of this shit is real, do whatever you want but don't expect us to protect you" — would be an excellent and satisfactory outcome. In practice, they would probably feel compelled to step into extreme cases like FTX where laws were violated immaterial of the jurisdictional status of blockchain assets, which is a good thing.

A firm set of regulatory guidelines, which does not imply a bailout by any means, would also be a good outcome. The worst part of what we have now is that the legal status of this industry in the US is completely opaque, and the constantly changing uncertainty is driving investment in the technology overseas or stifling it all together.

The government is completely failing its mandate with this policy of inaction and indifference. Pick anything!

> Yeah, we need decent regs for Crypto.

It seems to be self-regulating, people put money in and can’t get it back out so stop putting money in.

Until the next hype cycle when a new group learns the lesson of “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

How is that self-regulating?

Whooooosh...

Was it a joke? Really? Because if it was, then I think I am not deep enough into the meta of this to see it.

I was watching this thing on the YouTubes about carrier pigeons, they didn’t have to kill every single one of them to cause their extinction but just enough for them to be incapable of breeding.

Self-regulating through human suffering caused by greed. Not the best type of regulation for society I venture.

if this is an individual than fine, but if it's a derivative wrapping up a bunch of opaque "assets", purchased by a fund that manages say retirement savings for mandatory investors like a pension, there is a huge risk. It's like if every teacher was required to finance a sub-prime mortgage.

They have risk management people though. If those people aren’t doing their jobs, the fund has bigger problems. There are much larger and less hypothetical issues with public pensions around risk.

> There are much larger and less hypothetical issues with public pensions around risk.

Such as?

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