President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Wednesday, in the works for months now, to launch a crossagency federal government effort to regulate cryptocurrency. For context, cryptocurrency is decentralized, digital, nongovernmental money — Bitcoin is the most famous type of crypto.
This emerging industry is newfangled and complicated, which is exactly why Biden and detached bureaucrats shouldn’t be trying to regulate it.
Think about it: Biden was born in 1942. He’s nearly 80 years old. Even the sharpest octogenarian (which, um, he is not) typically struggles to understand new technology, be it an iPhone or even email. But our elderly president is supposed to regulate blockchain technology competently?
One can only imagine the dysfunction that could entail. There is a multitrillion-dollar global industry at stake here, with millions of livelihoods, investments, and assets at risk.
Of course, Biden has many deputies and legions of federal bureaucrats to help him write these rules. But even they aren’t up to date with the technology. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, for example, has pushed aggressively for the regulation of cryptocurrency — even though she doesn’t really understand the technology she wants to crack down on. This is evidenced by her continued conflation of Bitcoin and Dogecoin, a meme currency literally intended as a joke by its creators and purchasers.
Sure, some federal bureaucrats that Biden deputizes might have more familiarity with the technology. But even those heavily involved with cryptocurrency will admit it is a struggle to keep up with technology that is so complicated and so rapidly evolving.
“While I think that some form of regulation is inevitable, I also think that it is too early in the development of crypto to pursue regulation,” University of Mississippi economist Joshua Hendrickson previously told me in an interview. “Blockchain technology has the potential to be a significant and important source of innovation. To pursue regulation now is to risk stifling the innovation that could come from this technology — but maybe that is the point.”
It may well be that the federal government wants to stifle the growth of cryptocurrency before it gets even more widely adopted and influential.
Why?
Well, the fundamental value proposition of Bitcoin, for example, is that it is beyond the government’s control. This isn’t the case with the U.S. dollar, which the federal government can print and inflate. In many ways, the government controls the dollar and who can use it. But no government, or any central entity, can control or inflate Bitcoin.
Bitcoin’s independence is due to its decentralization and complicated blockchain technology. Understanding the nuances of that technology isn’t important for those outside the industry, but it’s just important to know that, when properly stored, Bitcoin is non-confiscatable.
In other words, the government can’t seize it or take it away from you. It can’t ban “problematic” people from Bitcoin. It can’t seize your assets if they are held in Bitcoin. (Held properly!)
Is it any wonder the federal government is moving to crack down on crypto?
Just don’t fall for the Biden administration’s spin about how its forthcoming regulatory apparatus is to “protect consumers” from cryptocurrency. It’s much more likely motivated by the federal government’s desire to keep our currency and financial freedom firmly under its control.
Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a co-founder of Based-Politics.com, a co-host of the BasedPolitics podcast, and a Washington Examiner contributor.
