The Case Against Crypto in 2025

In 2020, I wrote what became a widely-circulated critique of cryptocurrency and its implications for our financial system. At the time, I desperately hoped to be proven wrong. As a technologist who deeply believes in the potential of technology to strengthen democratic institutions, I took no pleasure in forecasting the corrosive potential of crypto assets. Unfortunately, the intervening years have borne out many of my predictions with shocking prescience.

In the years since publishing that critique, I've had the privilege of engaging with financial authorities and policymakers worldwide - from central banks and regulatory bodies to national governments and think tanks. My work has included coordinating joint letters to legislative bodies across three continents, authoring a book on the subject, and giving interviews at most global media outlets. I've done as much as humanly possible for one person to do to raise awareness of the risks posed by crypto assets because as a millennial who lived through the financial crisis I feel a twisted sense of civic responsibility to at least attempt to stave off the dark future I see unfolding.

However I must admit that despite extensive efforts to sound the alarm, the response has been stubborn resistance in the face of an overwhelming ambient culture of techno-solutionism that pervades modern life. Our democratic institutions remain paralyzed in the face of crypto's mounting threats, and the ascension of the Trump administration has only accelerated this regulatory abdication and the threat of crypto. I won't sugar-coat it, we are living through a challenging era and things may get much worse before they get better.

What originated as an obscure libertarian experiment has metastasized into an existential threat to financial stability and democratic governance. The parallel shadow system constructed around crypto assets has reproduced precisely the systemic vulnerabilities that post-2008 reforms sought to eliminate. We have watched in real time as major crypto institutions imploded, retail investors lost their savings, and sophisticated financial instruments emerged to conceal rather than manage risk. And yet governments across the western world have done next to nothing to address these issues.

After years of persistent advocacy, I recognize that the next phase of this crucial policy debate requires new voices and broader perspectives. People who are smarter and more eloquent than me. The challenges posed by cryptocurrency demand an expanded coalition of experts spanning technology, economics, law enforcement, national security, and public policy.

For those continuing this important work, I offer this parting counsel of the things I've learned over the past four years talking to politicians, regulators, and the public. With a pivotal showdown looming in 2025, Democrats still have a narrow window to strengthen their failed approach and fight against the MAGA party's extreme anarcho-capitalist agenda. The choices made in the coming months will determine whether we finally bring this shadow financial system under control or surrender our financial stability to unrestrained speculation that will with absolute certainty give rise to a new financial crisis or an even darker future.

Equivocation has Failed

Let's be crystal clear, that while Democrats deserve some criticism for their tepid response on the crypto problem, the Republican party bears the lion's share of responsibility for our regulatory paralysis. The GOP has been thoroughly corrupted by crypto industry money, with prominent Republican leaders actively championing deregulation while taking millions in campaign contributions from crypto super PACs. Their cynical obstruction tactics in Congress have effectively blocked any meaningful legislation, even modest consumer protection measures with broad bipartisan support. Republicans have created a legislative graveyard for crypto regulation, leaving federal agencies hamstrung and good-faith Democratic efforts dead on arrival. This systematic sabotage reflects the GOP's broader descent into market fundamentalism, where any attempt to rein in financial speculation is denounced as "stifling innovation", regardless of the clear public interest in basic oversight.

The core issue is that the Democratic party's impotent attempts at a "moderate" crypto policy position have become an embarrassing testament to political cowardice. The mealy-mouthed equivocations - that the technology is neither good nor bad, that we mustn't regulate software too heavily, that Bitcoin might have legitimate uses for marginalized groups - are intellectual fig leaves covering naked regulatory capture. While these positions might satisfy the party's donor class and business-aligned policy institutes, they represent an abdication of government's duty to protect the public.

As a result, the Democratic party's tendency toward technocratic incrementalism and regulatory restraint has created a vacuum that bad actors have eagerly filled. By treating crypto as just another financial innovation requiring modest oversight, moderates have enabled the very predatory practices they claim to oppose. Their appeals to "balanced regulation" and "promoting innovation" amount to little more than rhetorical cover for inaction in the face of widespread fraud and market manipulation.

This failure of nerve among Democratic leadership reflects a deeper rot in American politics - the capture of our regulatory apparatus by monied interests who profit from regulatory inaction. The same politicians who righteously denounce Wall Street excess are perfectly content to let crypto exchanges operate as unregulated casinos, destroying retail investors while enriching venture capitalists and hedge funds. Their studied neutrality serves only to protect the powerful while leaving ordinary citizens exposed to sophisticated financial predation.

The time for half-measures and careful moderation has long passed. The crypto industry has demonstrated, through repeated cycles of fraud and collapse, that it cannot and will not reform or regulate itself. Democratic policymakers must abandon their tepid both-sidesism and embrace aggressive regulation that treats crypto assets as what they are - unregistered securities and vehicles for financial crime. Anything less is an abdication of government's fundamental responsibility to protect the publict.

Yet there are reasons for hope. Leaders like Senator Elizabeth Warren have been steadfast champions of strong regulation and consumer protections, even in the face of fierce industry opposition and pressure from the donor class. Her tireless work to expose crypto's risks to consumers and financial stability, along with concrete legislative proposals to bring the industry under proper oversight, demonstrates the kind of principled leadership desperately needed. While a sclerotic Congress continues to drag its feet, there are still many Democrats who are willing to fight for a more aggressive regulatory response.

Shapeshifting Narratives

The crypto industry's greatest trick has been its ability to shapeshift its narrative to seduce any audience. Like a chameleon changing colors, crypto morphs into whatever its marks most desperately want to see. To libertarians, it's a weapon against government tyranny. To progressives, it's financial inclusion for the unbanked. To tech investors, it's paradigm-shifting innovation. To get-rich-quick dreamers, it's a ticket to untold wealth. The stories are as numerous as they are contradictory. When talking to regulators, crypto companies argue their tokens are mere collectibles like Beanie Babies, but to the public they present themselves as revolutionary financial instruments transforming the global economy. The sophistry and inconsistency is truly breathtaking.

However, this calculated incoherence is no accident - it's essentially a form of intellectual three-card monte designed to exhaust and confuse critics while attracting true believers of all stripes. The moment you try to pin down and critique one narrative, advocates smoothly slide to another, equally nonsensical position. Challenge Bitcoin's viability as a currency? It's actually a store of value. Question its merit as a store of value? It's really about the underlying technology. Point out the technology's fundamental limitations? Well, you just don't understand the transformative potential of web3. When web3 failed, they went back to the start and called it a currency again, and round and round they go.

The intellectual dishonesty is staggering. Bitcoin cannot simultaneously be a hedge against inflation and a high-growth speculative asset. It cannot be both a currency for daily transactions and digital gold to be hoarded. DeFi cannot replace traditional finance while depending entirely on traditional finance for its value and utility. NFTs cannot democratize art while concentrating wealth in the hands of wealthy speculators and wash traders. These contradictions don't matter because the real product being sold is the intoxicating promise of easy riches.

What makes this sophistry so insidious is how it weaponizes complexity and jargon to short-circuit critical thinking. The average person, overwhelmed by technical terminology and afraid of appearing ignorant, becomes susceptible to whatever narrative most appeals to their hopes and fears. Meanwhile, true believers can choose whichever story best fits their ideological preferences, constructing elaborate post-hoc justifications while ignoring the glaring contradictions in their position.

The end result is a kind of distributed Ponzi scheme where everyone convinces themselves they're the smart money, not the greater fool. The only consistent thread running through crypto's shifting narratives is the promise of getting rich through speculation rather than productive work. Everything else - the technology, the philosophy, the grand social vision - is merely elaborate window dressing for humanity's oldest scam: the promise of something for nothing.

Weaponized Jargon

The crypto industry has mastered the dark art of linguistic manipulation, wielding terms like "blockchain" and "tokenization" as magical incantations that mean everything and nothing at once. These words function as a kind of semantic smokescreen, allowing crypto advocates to dance between definitions whenever convenient. One moment they're describing a so-called "revolutionary" financial technology, the next a mere database - whatever serves their regulatory arbitrage du jour.

This deliberate ambiguity has proven devastatingly effective in policy circles, where aging legislators and their overwhelmed staffers grasp desperately for understanding. The average member of Congress, already struggling to operate their iPhone, stands no chance against this calculated obscurantism. They're left nodding along to incomprehensible techno-babble while the industry runs circles around meaningful oversight.

The crypto lobby has perfected this strategy of strategic ambiguity, shrouding their operations in a fog of technical jargon and shifting definitions. When pressed on specific regulations, they retreat into abstract discussions of cryptography and distributed systems. When questioned about their actual use cases, they pivot to grandiose visions of "financial inclusion" and "democratization." It's a shell game played with words instead of peas.

Almost a decade ago I led engineering teams trying to make blockchain technology work for regulated financial applications, and I can state with absolute technical certainty: the fundamental architecture is incompatible with anything except regulatory evasion and criminal enterprise. The immutable, public, and permissionless nature of these systems - the very features touted as "revolutionary" - make them unsuitable for legitimate financial infrastructure. If you remove these features to make the system work for enterprise needs, you're left with nothing more than an inefficient, overcomplicated database wrapped in buzzwords and marketing hype. But by keeping the discussion mired in definitional quicksand, the industry has successfully delayed this simple truth from reaching policymakers.

Let's be clear: no serious policy proposal involves banning cryptography, linked lists, or the word "blockchain." The crypto lobby has masterfully constructed this straw man argument to paint any regulation as technologically illiterate overreach. They deliberately conflate basic computer science concepts with their specific applications in unregistered securities and financial schemes.

The mathematical primitives underlying cryptocurrency - hash functions, public key cryptography, merkle trees - are and will remain perfectly legal. They're inert tools used across legitimate industries. But this fact is entirely irrelevant to the policy debate around crypto assets. We don't need to ban the SHA-256 hash function to effectively regulate cryptocurrency any more than we need to ban spreadsheets to prosecute accounting fraud.

For future advocates taking up this cause: don't let the industry's semantic games derail substantive policy discussions. When they retreat into abstract technical descriptions, drag the conversation back to their actual business practices. The problem isn't the technology - it's how it's being weaponized for financial misconduct. Focus relentlessly on the concrete harms: market manipulation, consumer fraud, sanctions evasion, and systemic risk.

The First Amendment protects speech, not financial schemes. We must understand that regulating crypto assets is about curtailing harmful business practices, not restricting software use. The industry's supposed constitutional concerns are a calculated distraction from straightforward securities and banking law violations.

Political Capture

The 2024 election cycle laid bare the extent of crypto's political influence operations. The industry poured nearly $200 million into campaign advertising, targeting lawmakers who dared question their practices or advocate for consumer protections. Yet tellingly, these attack ads studiously avoided mentioning cryptocurrency itself - a tacit admission that the American public remains deeply skeptical of an industry associated with ransomware, money laundering, and financial crime.

This massive spending spree has yielded a cohort of captured politicians who reliably champion industry interests while paying lip service to "innovation" and "financial inclusion." Representatives like Ritchie Torres, Kirsten Gillibrand, Chuck Schumer, and Rohit Khanna have emerged as particularly captured advocates for the industry. Their support comes as no surprise given the enormous sums flowing into their campaigns and leadership PACs from crypto interests.

The industry's primary legislative goal is transparent - they seek to engineer regulatory arbitrage by shifting oversight to the dramatically under-resourced Commodity Futures Trading Commission. With a budget of just $365 million and 700 employees, compared to the SEC's 2.1 billion and 4,500 staff, the CFTC would be overwhelmed by the task of policing this complex and fraud-prone sector. This is precisely what crypto lobbyists want - the appearance of regulation without meaningful enforcement capability.

This cynical strategy reflects a broader corruption of American democracy by monied interests. The crypto industry's lavish spending and sophisticated influence operations eerily echo earlier eras when powerful financial interests captured the regulatory apparatus meant to constrain them. Then as now, the result is a political system that protects predatory business practices while leaving ordinary citizens exposed to sophisticated forms of financial exploitation.

In the wake of FTX's collapse and Sam Bankman-Fried's conviction, the industry has only intensified its influence peddling, raising hundreds of millions through Super PACs to push legislation that would grant it legitimacy while avoiding meaningful oversight. Key Senate races have become battlegrounds, with industry groups specifically targeting independent voices like Senators Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren who have consistently stood against special interests.

The legislative agenda being advanced is particularly concerning. Both the House Financial Services and House Agriculture Committees have established dedicated digital asset subcommittees, leading to a flood of industry-friendly bills. These proposals consistently favor minimal regulation while enabling an expansion of crypto offerings that could further endanger retail investors and broader financial stability.

Most troubling is how the industry has successfully cultivated a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers deeply tied to crypto interests. These representatives consistently advance legislation designed to create the mere appearance of oversight while carefully preserving the regulatory gaps that enable predatory practices. This sophisticated capture of the legislative process threatens to permanently enshrine crypto's shadow financial system in law.

American Culture

The transformation of American culture over the past few decades reveals a troubling shift from principled civic engagement to naked transactionalism, particularly among younger generations. Growing up in the crucible of late-stage capitalism has warped many Americans' fundamental understanding of value and social relationships. Where previous generations at least paid lip service to enlightenment ideals of reason, justice, and the common good, a growing segment of society now views every interaction purely through the lens of personal gain and market logic.

This mindset is particularly prevalent among millennials (my generation), who have internalized the most extreme forms of market fundamentalism. Having come of age during the 2008 financial crisis, rising inequality, and the gig economy, many have abandoned traditional liberal values in favor of a ruthlessly transactional worldview. Every relationship, every interaction, every moment becomes an opportunity for arbitrage or personal advantage. The language of "optimization" and "value extraction" has escaped the boardroom to colonize our most intimate social spaces.

The rise of cryptocurrency perfectly embodies this cultural shift. Its most vocal advocates openly reject any notion of collective good or social responsibility in favor of pure financial self-interest. The industry's marketing specifically targets young men's anxieties about status and economic security, promising them that unrestrained market speculation is the only path to dignity in an increasingly precarious world. This message resonates precisely because it validates their existing tendency to view everything - friendships, romance, civic participation - as mere transactions to be optimized.

However, this transformation is neither universal nor inevitable. Many other developed nations have maintained stronger social bonds and collective values even while embracing market economies. The difference lies in their political and cultural institutions, which continue to promote civic virtue and social responsibility rather than pure self-interest. Even within America, many communities and subcultures still uphold enlightenment ideals of reason, justice, and the common good.

For Democrats crafting policy responses to cryptocurrency, understanding this cultural context is crucial. A significant portion of crypto's support comes not from genuine belief in its technological merits, but from those who have fully embraced market fundamentalism as a worldview and personal identity. Traditional appeals to consumer protection or financial stability may fall flat with voters who see unfettered speculation as a moral right and reject any notion of collective good.

Yet this reality should strengthen, not weaken, Democrats' resolve to aggressively regulate cryptocurrency. The New Deal succeeded precisely because it offered a compelling alternative to pure market fundamentalism - a vision of shared prosperity and collective purpose that transcended narrow self-interest. Today's Democratic party must similarly champion enlightenment values of reason, justice, and truth against the corrosive effects of extreme transactionalism. The crypto debate isn't just about financial regulation - it's about what kind of society we want to be.

Predatory Inclusion

The crypto industry's claims of financial inclusion represent a particularly insidious form of predatory inclusion - one that exploits legitimate concerns about financial discrimination to lure vulnerable communities into risky speculation. This narrative proves especially paralyzing for Democrats, who find themselves disarmed by accusations of "financial privilege" when raising valid regulatory concerns.

The industry cynically appropriates the language of social justice while targeting the very communities historically harmed by financial discrimination. After generations of redlining, loan denials, and predatory lending, minority communities' legitimate desire to close the wealth gap makes them especially vulnerable to crypto's false promises of financial empowerment.

This predatory inclusion manifests in deliberately exploitative practices. The industry strategically places Bitcoin ATMs in predominantly Black, Latino, and low-income neighborhoods, charging exorbitant fees while often only allowing purchases, not sales. They aggressively market get-rich-quick narratives in communities with limited financial resources and resilience, knowing full well that crypto's extreme volatility and rampant fraud puts their targets at risk of devastating losses.

What's marketed as a path to financial liberation instead becomes another vehicle for exploitation. The industry's targeting of minority communities isn't inclusion - it's predation wearing the mask of empowerment. For communities that can least afford losses, crypto's combination of volatility, fraud, and manipulated markets represents not an opportunity, but a threat to generational wealth building.

The industry's co-option of progressive language represents a calculated strategy to deflect criticism and legitimize their practices. Terms like "democratizing finance" and "financial inclusion" are wielded as shields against regulatory scrutiny, while the underlying business model continues to extract wealth from vulnerable communities. This appropriation of social justice terminology to serve profit motives undermines genuine efforts at economic empowerment and makes it harder to address real systemic inequities. The result is a cynical inversion where the language of liberation is used to enable further exploitation.

Criminality

Just as I wrote in 2025, cryptocurrency's primary real-world use case, beyond pure gambling, is enabling criminal enterprise and sanctions evasion on a massive scale. From North Korean hackers to Russian oligarchs, from narco-terrorists to ransomware gangs, crypto provides the financial infrastructure for modern organized crime.

The numbers are staggering. In 2023 alone, the FBI documented over 69,000 crypto-related fraud complaints with losses exceeding $5.6 billion. This likely represents just a fraction of actual criminal activity, as many victims never report their losses and sophisticated criminals successfully obscure their operations. The true scale of crypto-enabled crime may be orders of magnitude larger.

North Korea has turned cryptocurrency theft into a cornerstone of state financing, using armies of hackers to raid exchanges and steal billions in digital assets. These funds directly support the regime's nuclear weapons program and other illicit activities, demonstrating how crypto undermines global security. Similarly, Iranian state actors exploit cryptocurrency to evade international sanctions, funding terrorist operations across the Middle East.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine highlighted cryptocurrency's role in sanctions evasion. Despite international financial restrictions, Russian oligarchs and state entities have leveraged crypto networks to move billions of dollars, undermining the effectiveness of coordinated Western sanctions. The decentralized nature of cryptocurrency, touted as a feature by advocates, serves in practice as a critical vulnerability in the global anti-money laundering regime.

The narcotics trade has eagerly embraced cryptocurrency, with cartels using it to launder proceeds and facilitate cross-border payments. Mexican drug organizations alone are estimated to launder billions annually through crypto networks, exploiting the pseudonymous nature of transactions to obscure the flow of illegal profits. This has made the task of disrupting drug trafficking operations significantly more challenging for law enforcement.

Beyond organized crime, cryptocurrency enables an endless parade of scams targeting retail investors. The playbook is depressingly consistent: unregistered securities offerings, false promises of astronomical returns, wash trading to manipulate prices, and misappropriation of customer funds. The industry's resistance to basic financial controls and customer protections creates perfect conditions for sophisticated fraud.

Tax evasion through cryptocurrency has also emerged as a major concern for authorities. The difficulty of tracking crypto transactions, combined with widespread non-reporting of gains, creates a shadow financial system that deprives governments of legitimate revenue. This tax gap ultimately shifts the burden onto compliant citizens while undermining public services.

Perhaps most troubling is how cryptocurrency enables ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure, healthcare facilities, and local governments. Criminal groups can now easily monetize cyberattacks through untraceable ransom payments, creating an entire criminal industry that threatens public safety and national security. The Colonial Pipeline attack demonstrated how crypto-enabled ransomware can disrupt essential services across entire regions. The only place that crypto has truly found product market fit is in enabling criminal enterprise.

Tech Institutions

The technology industry's institutions have devolved into little more than libertarian think tanks and self-congratulatory social clubs. Organizations like the IEEE, ACM and EFF, which once stood for broader societal good, now serve primarily as echo chambers for techno-utopian fantasies and regulatory resistance. Their leadership, steeped in the misguided idealism of the cypherpunk era, consistently prioritizes an absolutist view of technological freedom over any meaningful engagement with democracy or the public good.

The rank and file of the industry are no better - an army of well-compensated automatons who have traded their moral compass for stock options and catered lunches. Technologists rival Wall Street bankers in their studied indifference to the societal impact of their work. Behind their carefully cultivated image of casual brilliance lies a crushing intellectual and moral laziness. They build surveillance systems, addictive platforms, and manipulative algorithms while hiding behind the paper-thin shield of "just following the product roadmap."

This moral abdication finds cover in a tepid progressivism that treats work as merely a means of survival under capitalism. The logic is seductive in its simplicity: we all need a paycheck to live, so we can't be held responsible for what our employers choose to build. This permission structure allows tech workers to maintain a veneer of left-wing politics while actively undermining the social good they claim to support. They'll tweet support for universal healthcare while implementing systems that cause teenagers to commit suicide - cognitive dissonance resolved through the comforting notion that they're just doing what they must to get by in an unjust system.

The public's faith in tech worker restraint or corporate self-regulation is dangerously misplaced. The industry's workforce has proven itself entirely willing to implement whatever dystopian features maximize engagement metrics, so long as the compensation packages remain competitive. The occasional protests amount to little more than performative gestures, quickly forgotten when the next round of RSUs vest. This is an industry I am very much a part of, and we deserve every bit of society's growing contempt - we've earned our place alongside predatory lawyers and corporate lobbyists as professionals who consistently choose self-interest over social responsibility.

Securities and Exchange Commission

While Gary Gensler's SEC ultimately arrived at the correct regulatory stance on cryptocurrency, the path there was frustratingly slow and tentative. History will likely judge Gensler favorably as a principled regulator who stood firm against an onslaught of industry pressure and personal attacks, but the deliberate pace of enforcement allowed the crypto bubble to inflate far larger than necessary. A more aggressive early approach could have prevented billions in retail investor losses and curtailed the industry's growing political influence.

To his credit, Gensler maintained a consistent position that most crypto assets are unregistered securities, even as intense lobbying and congressional pressure sought to undermine this basic regulatory framework. His SEC methodically built cases against major industry players while facing severe resource constraints and coordinated resistance. The string of successful enforcement actions in 2023-24 validated his approach and helped establish essential case law.

However, this measured strategy also reflected a broader Democratic tendency toward technocratic incrementalism when bolder action was needed. A more forceful regulatory response in 2021-22, while the industry was still relatively contained, could have short-circuited its expansion into a systemic threat. Instead, the slow accumulation of case law and regulatory guidance allowed bad actors to exploit inaction while building political defenses against oversight.

The lesson for future Democratic leadership is clear - having the right policy position isn't enough. Effective regulation requires the political courage to act decisively, even in the face of powerful opposition. While Gensler deserves credit for staying the course under immense pressure, his legacy also highlights the costs of regulatory timidity when confronting emerging threats to financial stability and consumer protection. We're now left with the regulatory equivalent of trying to put out a forest fire with a garden hose.

Media

The media's coverage of cryptocurrency has proven consistently inadequate for meaningful policy discourse. While major outlets can generally report basic facts about significant events like exchange collapses or high-profile arrests, they demonstrate a concerning inability to engage with the substantive regulatory and policy implications of this technology.

This limitation manifests most prominently in what might be called the "Bloomberg consensus," epitomized by writers like Matt Levine who approach crypto with a detached intellectual curiosity that prioritizes clever analysis over public welfare. This stance - treating cryptocurrency as a fascinating experiment in market structure worthy of observation rather than a contagion requiring intervention - exemplifies the problem. When sophisticated financial instruments are being weaponized against retail investors, mere observation becomes a form of complicity.

The New York Times' coverage proves particularly problematic, often serving as an unintentional reputation laundering service for the industry. Their tendency to present "balanced" coverage of fundamentally predatory business models grants unearned legitimacy to crypto enterprises. By treating industry talking points as equivalent to regulatory concerns, they create false equivalencies that muddy public understanding rather than clarify it.

Even well-intentioned journalists (of which there are many) face structural barriers to producing meaningful coverage. The sheer volume of concerning incidents in the cryptocurrency space makes it impossible to thoroughly investigate each case, leading to superficial coverage that fails to expose systemic issues. The complexity of cryptocurrency's technical, financial, and regulatory dimensions requires deep expertise across multiple domains, yet the modern media environment's demands for rapid content production means reporters must constantly chase the next headline rather than build deep understanding. Additionally, even when reporters uncover clear evidence of malfeasance, legal departments often require watered-down language to avoid potential litigation, making it nearly impossible to call a spade a spade. The result is coverage that barely scratches the surface while questionable practices continue to emerge unchallenged.

For those seeking to advance meaningful policy changes, traditional media engagement is increasingly ineffective, especially for reaching younger audiences. The crypto industry's sophisticated PR machine and media's limitations make it nearly impossible to get complex messages through. Instead, we need to focus on platforms where younger civicly engaged voters actually spend their time. Writing op-eds for the Financial Times and Foreign Policy is all well and good, but it won't reach the people who need to hear it in our increasingly post-literate culture.

The Dark Future

Let me paint a picture of a possible future that I believe could emerge if we do not act.

The breakdown of the international liberal order creates perfect conditions for cryptocurrency's most dystopian potential to emerge. As multilateral institutions crumble and democratic norms erode globally, we're witnessing the rise of hollow democracies - maintaining the superficial trappings of democratic process while being thoroughly captured by plutocratic interests. Cryptocurrency serves as the perfect tool for this capture, enabling untraceable flows of dark money that render campaign finance laws meaningless and electoral systems mere theater.

The historian Quinn Slobodian provides a compelling analysis in Crack-Up Capitalism, where wealthy elites seek to fragment nation states into private zones of control, while Anne Applebaum's Autocracy Inc documents the rise of modern authoritarian networks. These analyses predict a likely future: as multilateral institutions crumble and democratic norms erode globally, we see the emergence of hollow democracies - maintaining the superficial trappings of democratic process while being thoroughly captured by minority interests.

Following the Viktor Orbán playbook, these regimes maintain a thin veneer of democratic legitimacy while systematically dismantling institutional checks and balances. Cryptocurrency serves as a powerful catalyst for this transformation, providing the perfect tool for plutocrats to further capture the political process. Campaign finance laws become meaningless as untraceable crypto assets flow freely to compliant politicians. Electoral systems remain technically intact, but outcomes are increasingly predetermined through sophisticated manipulation funded by wealth and algorithmic manipulation of attention.

The wealthy crypto-holding class effectively becomes a shadow government, using their accumulated digital assets to shape policy and capture regulatory agencies. While formal democratic institutions continue to exist, they serve mainly as rubber stamps for policies that benefit this new plutocracy. Public services are gradually privatized and hollowed out, with cripled private alternatives emerging that further entrench inequality.

Most disturbing is how this system perpetuates itself through manufactured consent. Social media platforms, their algorithms optimized for engagement and controlled by autocratic and plutocratic interests, keep the public distracted with an endless stream of artificial controversies and manufactured culture wars. Critical thinking and civic engagement wither as people retreat into virtual worlds and digital communities carefully curated to maintain political apathy.

The promised crypto utopia reveals itself as a nightmare of democratic decay - not through outright authoritarianism, but through the quiet erosion of democratic substance while maintaining democratic form. Public institutions continue to exist but serve primarily as vehicles for private interests, with cryptocurrency providing the perfect tool for this capture. The death of democracy comes not through violent revolution but through the gradual hollowing out of democratic institutions until only an empty shell remains.

Future Work

I'm writing this primarily for Congressional staffers and strategists (you know who you are 👋). The political reality through 2026 demands a defensive strategy focused on preventing harmful legislation rather than pursuing immediate reform. With Republicans controlling the House, wielding effective veto power in the Senate, and now heading the SEC and DOJ, passing or enforcing robust crypto regulation is effectively impossible in the near term. Instead, Democrats must concentrate on blocking industry-written bills while building public support and preparing comprehensive oversight frameworks for when they regain control of Congress and the executive branch.

This interim period provides an opportunity to shape the broader narrative around cryptocurrency and its societal impact. The industry's unpopularity with the general public - Pew Research polling consistently shows skepticism above 60% - creates fertile ground for education about systemic risks and predatory practices. This skepticism stems from direct lived experience - millions of Americans have lost savings to crypto scams, watched friends and family members get burned by fraudulent schemes, or seen young men in their communities consumed by gambling addiction. Democrats must recognize this as both a moral imperative and political opportunity - by standing firmly against industry-written bills that would enable further exploitation, they can demonstrate their commitment to protecting ordinary Americans from sophisticated financial predators.

Paradoxically, the Trump administration may also be a gift to critics, as exemplified by the shameless TRUMP memecoin launch on the eve of his inauguration. Nothing could better crystallize cryptocurrency's true nature than a former president eagerly slapping his "brand" on a worthless token, nakedly designed to extract money from his most devoted followers. This isn't subtle regulatory arbitrage or complex financial innovation - it's a carnival barker hawking digital snake oil to an audience he views as marks. For those encountering cryptocurrency for the first time through this lens, the industry's protestations about "financial freedom" and "technological innovation" ring especially hollow. When a sitting president is willing to so blatantly leverage his office for a quick crypto cash grab, it becomes impossible to maintain the pretense that this technology serves any purpose beyond enabling sophisticated grift. The TRUMP token stands as a perfect crystallization of everything wrong with cryptocurrency - and now it's incredibly easy to paint the entire industry with a broad brush given the very visible examples of predation at the highest levels of government.

In the next administration, the crypto industry's aggressive lobbying and attacks on regulatory advocates should be welcomed, not feared. As Franklin Roosevelt declared of the financial interests arrayed against the New Deal: "They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred." Their opposition validates the Democratic Party's role as defender of public welfare against sophisticated financial predation. Every industry attack ad and hostile congressional hearing becomes an opportunity to highlight crypto's true nature as a vehicle for exploitation.

Although there is an elephant in the room, it is a stark reality that demands acknowledgment: strict enforcement of existing securities regulation frameworks - specifically the Securities Act of 1933 and Securities Exchange Act of 1934 - would effectively terminate the cryptocurrency industry's operations within U.S. jurisdiction. The vast majority of crypto offerings and exchanges currently operating would be deemed non-compliant with these foundational statutes. Rather than equivocate on this point, policymakers should embrace this conclusion. The cryptocurrency market's primary function of facilitating speculative trading of digital tokens with no underlying economic claims or productive value represents neither capital formation nor efficient market allocation. Such pure speculation, divorced from fundamental economic activity, provides no meaningful contribution to aggregate welfare or economic productivity. If society wishes to facilitate zero-sum gambling, we have properly regulated venues for such activities — they're called casinos. The distinction between legitimate capital markets and speculative gambling must be maintained and strengthened.

Success requires maintaining message discipline across the party while building a broader coalition of technologists, academics, consumer advocates, and politicians who recognize crypto's systemic threats. The goal is not just blocking bad legislation, but laying the intellectual and political groundwork for comprehensive regulation when Democrats regain full control. There is still hope, and history gives us reason for optimism. We've faced similar challenges before - from the robber barons of the Gilded Age to the financial predators of the 1920s, from the military-industrial complex to Big Tobacco. Each time, democracy and the public good ultimately prevailed through the determined efforts of activists, journalists, academics and principled public servants who refused to accept a darker future.

The Progressive Era's triumph over unfettered capitalism, the New Deal's reshaping of the financial system, and the regulatory frameworks built in response to the 2008 crisis all demonstrate our capacity to harness dangerous technologies and market forces for the common good. These victories weren't inevitable - they required sustained struggle against entrenched interests and their political allies. But they proved that organized democratic resistance can overcome even the most powerful opponents. The crypto industry's apparent strength is more fragile than it appears. Like previous schemes built on speculation and fraud, it requires constant growth and new victims to sustain itself. As public understanding grows and regulatory pressure builds, its fundamental weaknesses become harder to conceal. The same pattern that brought down earlier threats to democracy - exposure, education, organization, and regulation - will work again.

The arc of history does indeed bend toward justice, but only because generations of committed citizens put their shoulders to the task of bending it. Today's challenge calls us to do the same - to reject both authoritarian strongmen and techno-solutionism in favor of democratic renewal and continuation of the economic conditions for human flourishing. The tools and knowledge we need already exist. The only question is whether we have the wisdom and courage to use them.