In an open letter on Wednesday, dozens of leaders of the technology industry called on U.S. lawmakers to take a tougher stance on the cryptocurrency industry on the grounds that it is being used for "unsound and extremely unstable speculation" It is reported that 26 computer scientists, software engineers and scholars, including Harvard computer security expert Bruce Schneier and Google cloud chief engineer Kelsey Hightower, positively urged Congress to resist the pressure from financiers, lobbyists and supporters in the digital asset industry.
This open letter It is mainly written to leaders of both parties in Congress, including Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the house of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, leader of the minority party in the house of Representatives, Chuck Schumer, leader of the majority party in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, leader of the minority party in the Senate, and members of the Senate Banking / house finance committee.
Although people in the blockchain industry claim that "relevant technologies represent a positive financial innovation and can solve the financial problems faced by ordinary Americans to a certain extent", they try to open up a regulatory haven for these defective and unverified financial instruments.
However, in this open letter, science and technology leaders still raised strong doubts. In particular, unsound and highly volatile speculative crypto assets are being promoted to investors who may not really understand their risk levels.
Co branded documents (via google docs)
Bruce Schneier said in an interview with the financial times that "the claims of blockchain advocates are obviously generalized, because encrypted assets are neither secure nor self claimed to be decentralized. Any mechanism that forgets the password is equivalent to losing life savings is no reason to be regarded as a secure system".
It should be noted that about three months ago, the Biden administration also called on the Ministry of finance, the Federal Reserve and other government agencies to study the risks and rewards of cryptocurrency and explore the possibility of creating a government controlled cryptocurrency (or "digital dollar").
According to public citizen Analysis: from 2018 to 2021, the lobbying fund of the encryption industry has increased from US $2.2 million to US $9million.
On Wednesday, Stephen Diehl, a British software engineer who is one of the co signers, also said on Twitter:
The encryption industry lobby spent millions of dollars trying to explain to the government that encryption assets belong to some kind of 'innovation' and that all fintech innovations are beneficial without harm, while ignoring other costs.
Fortunately, they have clearly expressed the real views of computer scientists on blockchain to the Congress in the form of an open letter.