Tech experts ask Washington to oppose the influence of the crypto industry

A group of renowned technologists has come together to push the US legislators hard against the burgeoning cryptocurrency industry, which represents the first concerted effort to counteract the well-financed lobbying of blockchain companies.

The Harvard Dozent Bruce Schneier, the former Microsoft engineer Miguel de Icaza and the senior engineer at Google Cloud Kelsey Hightower are among the 26 leading computer scientists and academics who have signed a letter to the US legislator, in which crypto investment and blockchain technology criticize sharply become.

While individuals have expressed similar warnings about the security and reliability of digital assets, this represents an organized effort to challenge the growing influence of crypto supporters who want to resist the foam sector.

"The claims of the blockchain supporters are not correct," said Schneier. "It is not certain that it is not decentralized. Every system in which you forget your password and lose your savings is not a safe system," he added.

"We make counter lobby, this is what this letter is about," says signator and software developer Stephen Diehl. "The crypto industry has its people, they tell politicians what they want."

A current analysis of the US Congression Disclosure Database of Public Citizen, a consumer representative, showed that the number of lobbyists represented by the crypto industry between 2018 and 2021 rose from 115 to 320 and the funds that have been spent on lobby work for the crypto sector four to $ 9 to 9 million in the same period.

The Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange based in the United States led the efforts with 26 lobbyists and $ 1.5 million, which were spent on lobbying in 2021. Companies with growing interest in the crypto sector, including Meta, Visa and PayPal, have also campaigned for the industry.

In the meantime, leading crypto exchanges such as FTX, Binance and Crypto.com have spent a lot of money on endorsement deals with sports stars and entertainment sites to advertise their products in public.

The supporters of the industry claim that cryptocurrencies offer the response to a number of macroeconomic problems with which society is confronted with the provision of banking services for millions of people worldwide without access to traditional financial institutions, the protection of financial privacy and the possibility of giving people affected by inflation.

But in the letter that the Financial Times was presented, the technologists write: "We urgently ask you to resist the printing of financiers, lobbyists and sponsors of the digital asset industry, a regulatory safe port for these risky, faulty and unproven digital financial instruments."

goal is to reach across party borders. The letter is aimed at both the majority and minority leaders in the Senate, Charles Schumer and Mitch McConnell, as well as leading senators such as the Republican Patrick Toomey and the Democrat Ron Wyden, both of whom have previously supported some goals of the crypto industry.

The step takes place when President Joe Biden signed a implementation regulation on digital assets in March 2022, which stated a number of goals that ranged from consumer protection to combating crypto -related illegal financing.

recent events, such as the collapse of the StableCoin Terrausd, have again brought the concern about the financial stability risks that the cryptom market brings.

"crypto-assets were the vehicles for unsolide and highly volatile speculative investment plans that are actively advertised by small investors who may not be able to understand their nature and risk," says the letter.

But the signatories go even further and claim that crypto and blockchain technology does not fulfill a real purpose.

"The computing power corresponds to what you could do centrally with a 100 dollar computer," said de Icaza. "We essentially waste devices worth several million dollars because we decided that we do not trust the banking system."