The Way the Senate Melted Down Over Crypto Is Very Revealing

For months, there's been a debate over what should count as infrastructure. Roads and bridges, sure. But what about preschool and health insurance and child care? Democrats say yes, Republicans say no. With the exception of broadband access, however, there's been almost no discussion of the infrastructure underpinning the digital economy. But right at the end, that changed, when a meltdown over crypto regulation almost derailed the bipartisan infrastructure bill's passage in the Senate. I'm going to try to do a few things here. First, I want to explain why crypto matters, even if you think Bitcoin is just goldbuggery for nerds. The technology is evolving to be much more than a digital currency, and Silicon Valley sees it as the digital infrastructure atop which the next internet will be built. Then I want to trace the fight that consumed the final days of the bill, because this was just an early skirmish in what will be a much longer campaign. "Crypto started in 2009 with Bitcoin," Fred Ehrsam, the co-founder of both Coinbase and Paradigm, a crypto-focused investment firm, told me. "Many people still relate to it as a speculative phenomenon focused around digital money. That was certainly true… Read full this story

The Way the Senate Melted Down Over Crypto Is Very Revealing have 313 words, post on www.nytimes.com at August 12, 2021. This is cached page on IT Breaking News. If you want remove this page, please contact us.