Crypto holdings hit $4 Trillion. That’s more than all the gold in Fort Knox and personal bank vaults combined. Waaaay more. Thank you, GENIUS act . .

Photo above - Late night cable TV crypto ads soon to become legal. George Foreman could have been a spokesperson. (RIP - March 21, 2025)

If you already own crypto, congrats. When President Trump signed the “GENIUS” Act yesterday (see link blow), your holdings probably soared. Bitcoin alone was up 20% over the past month, in anticipation of this happy day.

The GENUIS act. I hope this turns out better than the “Smart Car” by Mercedes/Daimler. For that matter I hope it’s better than my smart watch, which drained itself to zero battery overnight when I accidentally started the stopwatch function while sleeping.

Who sponsored the GENIUS act? You can’t credit republicans alone for this. There were several democrat co-sponsors. But the bill was actually written by the crypto industry and lobbyists, so the sponsors may not have even read it. Congress seldom reads what it passes these days anyway.

Who wouldn’t want to have their own executives decide how much (or little) regulation is on their products? Imagine if Ford and GM were wrote the laws on auto safety. We’d be seeing TV ads about how seat belts keep you from being thrown clear of your burning car in a wreck, and how airbags are basically shotgun shells with balloons attached.

The crypto boys want you to know that the GENIUS act prevents money laundering. Seriously, they said that, with a straight face. But if crypto moguls were interested in stopping money laundering, they could have done this on their own, since day one. In fact, the ENTIRE rationale of crypto is anonymity, tax evasion, money laundering, ransomware, and dark web transactions. Hunter Biden was famously paid in tax-opaque NFT’s by persons unknown in China for his “Art”. Millions of dollars. How much exactly? We don’t know . . . sleuths have only uncovered $1.5 million so far.

Another fun GENIUS act fact – no audits are required unless your institution handles more than $50 billion in crypto. That’s going to solve a LOT of problems for some players, I guess.

There are also GENIUS act rules about who gets paid first and last in the event of crypto company failure. If you thought crypto holders would be paid first, you probably shouldn’t own stocks either. Enron shareholders got 10 cents on the dollar after bankruptcy. And most of that ten-cent payout was from penalties against accounting contractors like Arthur Anderson. Which itself went bankrupt after being brought to court for audit fraud.

So don’t expect favored treatment when your crypto company is hacked, misappropriates client funds, or its founder simply disappears to Nigeria or Singapore. As a depositor, you’re an unsecured creditor, the lowest life form in the financial food chain.

Is today's column a recommendation to buy gold instead? Not really. There’s a surprising overlap among crypto fanboys, gold bugs, apocalypse preppers, gun hoarders, and online scammers. I think the future prospects for gold are inversely related to how many late night TV ads appear telling us that now is the perfect time to buy. And now we're likely to start seeing TV ads telling us to buy crypto. But we might have more regrets with crypto than if we bought a George Foreman grill. Mine still works, at least.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

GENIUS Act Signed: Stablecoins Now Face Strict Rules & Oversight

Crypto Market Cap Races Toward $4 Trillion as Congress Passes Three Key Bills - CoinCentral

LeopoldBloom · M Best Comment

The problem with crypto is that it has two mutually incompatible qualities. It was originally devised as an alternative to fiat currency, with the public blockchain providing the assurance of value and limited supply normally provided by government. The idea was that people would use crypto instead of fiat currency and create an economy outside of government where goods and services could be bought and sold anonymously. The libertarian paradise! Of course, don't tell your average drug buyer that Bitcoin isn't as anonymous as he thinks and it is possible to track transactions.

The problem is that the value of crypto fluctuates too much for this to work, and too many people bought it as an investment, with the intention of selling it high and exchanging it for fiat currency, which defeats the entire purpose. I predict that investors will move away from crypto and in ten years it won't exist anymore.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@LeopoldBloom best reply of the thread. clearly you understand the intent and failures of crypto.

with thousands of crypto flavors and coins, this has now become a giant fiat currency scam of it's own, and a bigger threat to stability than the dollar, euro, or chinese yuan.