BREAKDOWN: US Senate Banking Committee Asks ‘What Are Cryptocurrencies Good For?’
CoinDesk Podcast Network
CoinDesk
4.8 • 689 Ratings
🗓️ 27 July 2021
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren paint bitcoin’s populism as phony marketing.
This episode is sponsored by NYDIG.
Today on the Brief:
- Exchanges leaving China
- Binance looking to replace CZ with a regulatory-focused CEO
- Crypto venture funding continues
In today’s main discussion, NLW addresses not one, not two but three crypto hearings today spread across the Senate and House. One with a focus on ransomware, another on central bank digital currencies and the last a wide-ranging outlook at the value of cryptocurrencies versus their perceived risks.
One of the notable themes from the Senate Banking Committee hearing was disbelief in cryptos as populist, democratizing, decentralizing tools for remaking finance. Instead, political opponents argued that they were just the play places for shadowy cabals of miners and “super coders” (yes, that’s a term they really used).
More concerning is the argument that cryptos are increasingly a threat to the larger financial system. Where does crypto stand in the eyes of regulators following the hearings?
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NYDIG, the institutional-grade platform for Bitcoin, is making it possible for thousands of banks who have trusted relationships with hundreds of millions of customers, to offer Bitcoin. Learn more at NYDIG.com/NLW.
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The Breakdown is written, produced by and features NLW, with editing by Rob Mitchell and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Adam B. Levine is our executive producer and our theme music is “Countdown” by Neon Beach. The music you heard today behind our sponsor is “Only in Time” by Abloom. Image credit: Sarah Silbiger/Stringer/Getty Images, modified by CoinDesk.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The thing that's frustrating about her analysis is twofold. First, this idea of the shadowy |
| 0:05.3 | cabal of actual people who run the industry has been sort of disproven. The block-sized |
| 0:10.1 | war showed just how constrained the power of corporations within the Bitcoin ecosystem is. |
| 0:14.8 | In fact, that's one of its biggest selling points. And second, for me, it's nearly impossible |
| 0:20.1 | to watch Warren speak about these issues and not |
| 0:22.9 | just see a person who has spent so many years fighting what she sees as shady corporate power |
| 0:28.4 | that those patterns start to present everywhere. |
| 0:32.7 | Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. |
| 0:36.8 | It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. |
| 0:43.9 | The breakdown is sponsored by Nidig and produced and distributed by CoinDesk. |
| 0:50.3 | What's going on, guys? It is Tuesday, July 27th, and today we are discussing the latest hearings on cryptocurrency in Congress and the Senate and how the U.S. Senate is asking what are cryptocurrencies good for? |
| 1:03.6 | First up, however, let's do the brief. |
| 1:06.0 | First on the brief today, exchanges are leaving China. So China Fudd in 2021 has proven itself to be a very |
| 1:13.1 | different thing than in years past. For a while, it seemed like everything was just rehashing old |
| 1:18.6 | policies and old bands, but when the vice premier of China started discussing Bitcoin mining, |
| 1:24.5 | something major shifted. We could tell that this time was different because of |
| 1:29.9 | the reactions of miners. In the days after the VP speech, they started liquidating their |
| 1:34.5 | crypto, selling mining rigs, and generally figuring out how to make some big moves away from China. |
| 1:40.5 | In the following weeks, provinces started implementing new policies. At first, it was just banning |
| 1:45.7 | mining in areas powered by coal, but soon even hydro-powered mining became unwelcome, and it was |
| 1:51.7 | clear that there was a true sea change. We've subsequently covered the Great Western Hashrate |
| 1:57.2 | migration and everything from what it means for network security to political implications. |
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