On Tuesday, for the first time in its 234-year history, the United States House of Representatives voted to oust its current Speaker, California Republican Kevin McCarthy, in the culmination of a months-long rebellion against the politician instigated by a handful of disgruntled lawmakers from his own party. Without precedent, the remarkable occurrence now throws the House into paralysis until a majority of congresspeople can agree on a new Speaker. While the vote was openly condemned on Tuesday as disastrous by numerous Republicans, it may also hold the potential to raise the profile of a number of notably pro-crypto politicians who appear well positioned to succeed McCarthy. As soon as the Speaker position was formally vacated on Tuesday afternoon, McCarthy, in accordance with House rules, tapped a temporary House speaker to replace him in the interim: Patrick McHenry (R-NC), current leader of the powerful House Financial Services Committee. McHenry, a vocal advocate for the crypto industry, has attempted in recent months to leverage his influential position to create a comprehensive framework for American crypto regulation. A bill championed by the North Carolina congressman, which would create a clear path for crypto projects and exchanges to operate legally in the United States, has been circulating around Washington since this summer. Should McHenry leverage his current position as interim Speaker of the House to pursue the role permanently—and triumph in that effort—then the development would undoubtedly constitute the highest position in the United States government ever held by such a vocally pro-crypto politician. The Speaker of the House, in addition to coordinating all matters that come before Congress, is also the second person in line for the presidency after the Vice President. At the ResearchHub SciCon 2023 conference, investor Jason Fang of Sora Ventures spoke about the need for business development in decentralized science. Fang said a critical risk for decentralized science, also called DeSci, is the longer timeframe compared to other crypto investments. “For us, I think our risk is time. There are so many things that we can invest as crypto investors, and generally, for crypto investments, the turnover rate is relatively short compared to traditional [venture capital],” Fang said. He thinks DeSci needs people skilled in business development to translate research into business opportunities. “One of them is the DeSci. The other one that we’ve been extremely bullish on is Bitcoin utility. I think what we’re going to see is that traditional where traditional like healthcare where, where we see like a lot of the timeframe for these profits to be like, you know, around like the 10 years plus investment mark,” Fang said. “That might actually shrink to a lot shorter than that, maybe to two to three years.” The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) failed to convince a federal judge that its recent, high-profile courtroom loss to crypto firm Ripple Labs should be overturned, according to a court ruling issued Tuesday. U.S. District Court judge Analisa Torres—who ruled in July that Ripple’s sale of a cryptocurrency token directly to consumers did not constitute an illegally unregistered securities offering—wrote late Tuesday that the SEC had failed to show in its appeal that the decision was sufficiently faulty or problematic. The regulator was hoping to overturn the ruling before a final judgment is entered in the case next spring. You can find the full stories and more at the link below:
Newsletter #268
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