Tech Experts Call on Lawmakers to Push Back Against Cryptocurrency Industry
Dozens of leaders in the tech sector have requested on lawmakers to take a hard line with the cryptocurrency manufacturing as it increases its influence in Washington.
In an open letter on Wednesday, 26 computer scientists, software engineers and academics — counting Harvard computer security expert Bruce Schneier and Google Cloud indispensable engineer Kelsey Hightower — urged Congress to “resist pressure from digital asset manufacturing financiers, lobbyists and boosters to create a regulatory safe haven for these perilous, flawed and unproven digital financial instruments.”
The letter was addressed to lead Democrats and Republicans in Assembly, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Front-runner Mitch McConnell, as well as members of the Senate Committee on Banking and the House Cheap Services Committee.
It questioned the rosy picture painted by blockchain insiders “that these technologies characterize a positive financial innovation and are in any way gracious to solving the financial problems facing ordinary Americans.”
The letter also cautioned that crypto assets are populace used to promote “unsound and highly volatile speculative investment schemes” to investors who may not concept the real risks.
“The claims that the blockchain advocates make are not true,” Schneier told the Cheap Times. “It’s not secure, it’s not decentralized. Any rules where you forget your password and you lose your life savings is not a safe system.”
The threat comes nearly three months after President Joe Biden requested on the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve and novel government agencies to research crypto’s risks and rewards and to peep the possibility of creating a government-controlled cryptocurrency or “digital dollar.”
Lobbying bucks spent by the crypto industry roughly quadrupled from $2.2 million to $9 million between 2018 and 2021, according to analysis by the consumer advocacy business Public Citizen.
“[The] crypto lobby is spending millions to tell bests that crypto-assets are ‘innovation’ and all fintech innovation is unqualifiedly good, no commercial the human cost,” signatory Stephen Diehl, a UK software engineer, tweeted Wednesday.
“Today we set the record undiluted on what computer scientists really think about blockchain,” Diehl added.
