[didroe]

You have to ask yourself, why are those middlemen there at the moment? We have digital trading platforms / banking systems, the technological side of it is not the issue.

It's because regulation says only certain institutions are allowed to perform certain transactions, and have to perform certain checks, etc. I'm not saying there aren't inefficiencies that aren't directly related to regulation, eg. monopolistic behaviours. But that's the side-effect/price you pay for some kind of oversight. There is of course lots of room for improvement in the systems/regulation we have.

When you look at the history of where the regulations came from, it's usually in response to a major crisis. Humans tend to be reactionary, especially the ones in positions of power when they're enacting laws that limit their paymasters.

> The behaviour of said percentage-takers over the last century haven't exactly made regulation the saviour of the common citizenry either.

Look at the most recent major economic crisis of 2008. The main reason it was so devastating was due to rolling back regulation from previous crises, along with "innovative" financial products that regulators had turned a blind eye to. What do you think would have happened to business lending (ie. jobs) and the stock market (ie. people's pensions) if there had been zero regulation and no ability to inject liquidity into the system?

[BLKNSLVR]

> Look at the most recent major economic crisis of 2008. The main reason it was so devastating was due to rolling back regulation from previous crises, along with "innovative" financial products that had no oversight. What do you think would have happened to business lending (ie. jobs) and the stock market (ie. people's pensions) if there had been zero regulation and no ability to inject liquidity into the system?

I totally agree.

I am also, however, 100% skeptical as to the motivations of those pushing to regulate cryptocurrency because of the combination of facts that cryptocurrency is a threat to the encumbent financial institutions and the deregulation that caused the GFC was due to the lobbying of said encumbent financial institutions.

Basically, I think the system is corrupt from top to bottom and so their motivations are protection of status quo as opposed to protection of Joe Street-Level.

The total lack of understanding of how cryptocurrencies work, as evidenced by the infrastructure bill, shows they don't care about understanding it, they care about suppressing it. That's the message they're sending.

Yes, it should be regulated, there are too many scams in the space, and that gives the space a bad reputation but, damn, put some research time in before, how does that phrase go...:

Better to remain silent and thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.