According to an article in American Banker titled “SEC’s Gensler Directly Links Crypto and Bank Failures,” SEC Chair Gary Gensler has asked for more financial resources to police the crypto market. Gensler testified at an April 18 House Financial Services Committee hearing:
[Crypto companies] have chosen to be noncompliant and not provide investors with confidence and protections, and it undermines the $100 trillion capital markets …
Silvergate and Signature [banks] were engaged in the crypto business — I mean some would say that they were crypto-backed …
Silicon Valley Bank, actually when it failed, saw the country’s — the world’s — second-leading stable coin had $3 billion involved there, depegged, so it’s interesting just how this was all part of this crypto narrative as well.
Cryptocurrency experts Caitlin Long and Nic Carter take the opposite view. They acknowledge the link between crypto and the recent wave of bank failures and the runs and threatened runs they triggered, but Carter and Long make a compelling case that it was the FDIC, the SEC and the Federal Reserve that brought the banks down, by a coordinated, extrajudicial “war on crypto” that blocked that otherwise-legal industry from acquiring the banking services it needs.
The public banking movement has run up against similar roadblocks. Both cryptocurrencies and publicly-owned banks compete with the Wall Street-dominated private banking cartel, but more on that after a look at the suspicious events behind the recent bank runs.
Continue readingFiled under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | Tagged: cryptocurrencies, deposit insurance, FDIC, war on crypto | 125 Comments »
WEB OF DEBT BLOG 
The GENIUS Act and the National Bank Acts of 1863-64: Taking a Cue from Lincoln
This month Congress passed the GENIUS Act, an acronym for the “Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins of 2025.” Designed to regulate stablecoins, a category of cryptocurrency designed to maintain a stable value, the Act is highly controversial.
Critics variously argue that it anoints stablecoins as the equivalent of “programmable” central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), that it lacks strong consumer protections, and that government centralization destroys the independence of the cryptocurrency market. Proponents say the rapidly expanding stablecoin market not only provides a faster and cheaper payments system but can serve as a major funding source to help alleviate the federal debt crisis, which is poised to destroy the economy if not checked, and that the stablecoin market has gotten so large that without regulation, we may have to bail it out when it becomes a multitrillion dollar industry that is “too big to fail.”
For most people, however, the whole subject of stablecoins is a mystery, so this article will attempt to throw some light on it. It will also explore some historical use cases demonstrating how the government might incorporate stablecoins into a broader program for escaping the debt crisis altogether.
Continue reading →Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | Tagged: bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, economics, economy, FINANCE, Genius Act, Greenbacks, money, national debt, NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE BANK, public banking, stablecoins | 8 Comments »