Gregory Zerzan was the former acting assistant secretary to the treasury, and he goes as far as to say that Biden’s recently signed executive order on crypto is actually a disaster.
When the scope of the executive order was first released/leaked to the public eye, many thought that it was a good thing, because a potentially far worse outcome was maybe envisaged. On the news, the crypto market rallied, possibly as a reflection of the positive sentiment around the order.
However, former treasury official Gregory Zerzan said on a Fox Business video today that in his view, the opposite was true, and that crypto was dealt a blow by the executive order.
He believes that the crypto sector is just putting a BRAVE face on the executive order, saying that in the order, crypto was continually referred to as a “risk”, and that this was applied to human rights, climate change, and criminal enterprises, and that the only thing that wasn’t blamed on crypto was Covid-19.
He went on to say:
“The unfortunate thing about the order is, instead of saying look, crypto should be allowed to flourish here in the United States, it takes a top-down government run approach that asks every federal department from the EPA, to the department of Justice, and homeland security, to figure out how they can regulate crypto. That’s not a pathway to innovation.”
In short, Zerzan appears to be saying that the fox is being told to go away and come up with a scheme for how the chicken runs will be set up.
The former treasury official thinks that the potential creation of a US digital dollar (CBDC) is” fascinating”. He said:
“If the US decided to do a Bitcoin-like distributed LEDGER cryptocurrency, the US would either get great fiscal discipline, or more likely, we eventually go bankrupt.”
Asked on his reaction to the failed EU vote to ban proof-of-work consensus mechanisms such as Bitcoin, he said it was a positive development, but he said that the same situation exists as with the executive order, whereby “you have to go to government and get permission before you can innovate”. Therefore he is hopeful that congress will not ratify the suggestions that come out of it.
On the holding of cryptocurrency he says that “its promise has yet to be realised”, but that it “won’t be realised if we drown it in a sea of red tape.”
