Last week, the White House released a proposed framework for the regulation of cryptocurrency. The document gives the green light to regulators to continue crafting rules around the industry, and even explores the creation of a “CBDC”: a central bank digital currency. Actor, writer, and crypto skeptic Ben McKenzie joins Ryan Grim to discuss the framework and the future (or lack thereof) of the crypto industry.
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Ryan Grim: The White House this week unveiled an expansive series of reports on the crypto industry which is made up of digital assets and servers and crypto mines that seemed kind of silly about a decade ago but have since mushroomed into a full-blown thing we all apparently have to start thinking about.
The reports were asked for by an executive order back in March of this year, and hinted at some form of future regulatory structure for crypto and also inched forward toward the creation of a dollar-backed digital currency. Now for me, I’ve always placed crypto somewhere between pointless and a scam — and that’s setting aside the energy and carbon side of it. But it really doesn’t seem like it’s going away and ignoring it doesn’t seem to be the best approach.
Ben McKenzie is a writer, and actor, and a director, and has been one of the leading voices among crypto skeptics out there. This summer, for The Intercept, along with Jacob Silverman, he found a deeply disturbing dispatch on the world of crypto in El Salvador…
