As someone who works in "crypto" for lack of a better word, I very much agree with you on the Trump/crypto nexus. Anyone who thinks it is good or progress for the space is fooling themselves. Number might go up now, but when the backlash hits (and it will, probably in 4 years or less) it's going to be harsh and indiscriminate and will make the Biden admin look reasonable in comparison. I don't think it will completely annihilate the space, but it will be a long winter.
Taking a step back though, I do find the whole dynamic kind of interesting. A decade and a half ago, many people in the crypto space thought that the biggest threat was a direct crackdown. But actually the most dangerous government bad actors have been those that partially integrated with the space to use it, instead of attacking it directly. I'm thinking of North Korea and Trump specifically here. With the former putting a lot of effort into stealing anything that isn't bolted down and the latter exacerbating the worst tendencies of the space for his direct enrichment.
In both cases, the entities involved are so large and powerful they don't need to directly rely on the tools of the space to protect themselves. Unlike a lot of smaller bad actors, they can act with impunity even if they are publicly observed. See how NK used Tornado Cash for instance - not as a way to hide themselves long term, but to just disrupt direct tracking of funds in the short term so they can move it into cash quickly. Their long term strength/protection comes from their nation-state power not anon/psudonymity or censorship resistance, so they are happy to sacrifice the long term viability of the space for immediate gain.
I'm not sure what the best way for the space to handle this kind of attacker is, but I think the key is to use their size, obviousness and public hate for them against them. As I recently read on a tweet by Vlad Zamfir, "decentralization doesn't imply non-interventionism" and these attackers should be easy to build consensus against. If you could somehow put it to a vote, I'm sure 90+% of the space would love to ban NK or Trump, there just isn't a good mechanism for this kind of organizing. I've seen hints of it in the Privacy Pools proposal where users can individually exclude themselves from interacting with known bad actors in a decentralized way. Maybe this mechanism can be expanded and strengthened.
A critique of this is that these actors can try harder to be anonymous so they can "blend in with the crowd", this would make it a lot harder to organize against them. However, I would say that forcing them to do this would be a big improvement - it would make them act much slower and more carefully and limit the amount of harm they can quickly do.
As someone who works in "crypto" for lack of a better word, I very much agree with you on the Trump/crypto nexus. Anyone who thinks it is good or progress for the space is fooling themselves. Number might go up now, but when the backlash hits (and it will, probably in 4 years or less) it's going to be harsh and indiscriminate and will make the Biden admin look reasonable in comparison. I don't think it will completely annihilate the space, but it will be a long winter.
Taking a step back though, I do find the whole dynamic kind of interesting. A decade and a half ago, many people in the crypto space thought that the biggest threat was a direct crackdown. But actually the most dangerous government bad actors have been those that partially integrated with the space to use it, instead of attacking it directly. I'm thinking of North Korea and Trump specifically here. With the former putting a lot of effort into stealing anything that isn't bolted down and the latter exacerbating the worst tendencies of the space for his direct enrichment.
In both cases, the entities involved are so large and powerful they don't need to directly rely on the tools of the space to protect themselves. Unlike a lot of smaller bad actors, they can act with impunity even if they are publicly observed. See how NK used Tornado Cash for instance - not as a way to hide themselves long term, but to just disrupt direct tracking of funds in the short term so they can move it into cash quickly. Their long term strength/protection comes from their nation-state power not anon/psudonymity or censorship resistance, so they are happy to sacrifice the long term viability of the space for immediate gain.
I'm not sure what the best way for the space to handle this kind of attacker is, but I think the key is to use their size, obviousness and public hate for them against them. As I recently read on a tweet by Vlad Zamfir, "decentralization doesn't imply non-interventionism" and these attackers should be easy to build consensus against. If you could somehow put it to a vote, I'm sure 90+% of the space would love to ban NK or Trump, there just isn't a good mechanism for this kind of organizing. I've seen hints of it in the Privacy Pools proposal where users can individually exclude themselves from interacting with known bad actors in a decentralized way. Maybe this mechanism can be expanded and strengthened.
A critique of this is that these actors can try harder to be anonymous so they can "blend in with the crowd", this would make it a lot harder to organize against them. However, I would say that forcing them to do this would be a big improvement - it would make them act much slower and more carefully and limit the amount of harm they can quickly do.