Amid a flood of industry lobbying in Washington, DC, and Democrats’ capitulation, the Senate is set to pass the GENIUS Act, a sweeping cryptocurrency law that could spread fraud-ridden, destabilizing digital currencies across the banking system. But lawmakers and consumer protection experts warn that the bill has an even more serious problem: it would allow Elon Musk and other Big Tech tycoons to issue their own private currencies.
That means we could soon live in a world where all online transactions will require us to pay for goods in billionaires’ own made-up monopoly money, for which tech giants will be able to charge exorbitant transaction fees.
This scenario isn’t just a pipe dream. It’s a long-running project by tech platforms to control payment networks. In the past few weeks, Meta began laying the groundwork once again to launch its own cryptocurrency.
What’s more, thanks to a bipartisan “compromise” that convinced Democratic holdouts to support the legislation, the latest version of the bill could stop the government’s top financial and tech regulator from overseeing any of these potential tech currencies.
The GENIUS Act, which stands for Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins, was designed to create light-touch regulations for stablecoins, a more commonly used form of crypto token that is often pegged to the US dollar in an equivalent value (one stablecoin is redeemable to one dollar).
If it becomes law, any banking or even nonbanking enterprise could get a license to deal stablecoins with minimal oversight. This could riddle the entire financial system with volatility and make illicit activity like fraud and terrorism undetectable while providing major new markets to the…
Auteur: Luke Goldstein
