- Mark Cuban has said shutting off the crypto growth engine is like stopping e-commerce in 1995.
- Cuban implied tight regulations can stop innovation inside the industry.
- The Senate has voted on the original infrastructure bill.
The Senate has passed the infamous infrastructure bill that went to a vote unamended. The original language used in the bill is dubbed “problematic” as its definition of a crypto broker is so wide that miners, crypto wallet makers, and validators are included.
Originally, two amendments were proposed to address the impractical language used in the bill. The first amendment, which was supported by senators Ron Wyden, Cynthia Lummis, and Pat Toomey, fairly resolved the problem by proposing to exclude crypto wallet makers, miners, and developers from being defined as brokers.
However, Mark Warner and Rob Portman, two White House senators, unveiled a competitive amendment at the eleventh hour. The alternative amendment, as the Coin Center CEO called “disastrous,” did not exclude validators, crypto wallet makers, developers, and PoS miners from being categorized as brokers.
Despite the differences, the two opposing groups finally reached a settlement and proposed a joint amendment. However, for this new amendment to be passed, unanimous consent was necessary since the Senate had agreed not to add any more amendments.
Unfortunately, Sen. Richard Shelby objected to the bill, and just because of this the newly agreed-upon amendment was not passed. Finally, the original infrastructure bill, with unworkable language for the crypto industry, was approved by the Senate and passed to the House.
Mark Cuban Criticizes Tighter Rules On Crypto
Mark Cuban, entrepreneur billionaire and a prominent Bitcoin and crypto prominent, has recently cited concern regarding the infrastructure bill’s impact on the crypto industry. He likened the growth of crypto to the growth of e-commerce in 1995.
During an interview with The Washington Post, Cuban said:
Shutting off this growth engine would be the equivalent of stopping e-commerce in 1995 because people were afraid of credit card fraud. Or regulating the creation of websites because some people initially thought they were complicated and didn’t understand what they would ever amount to.
In late May, Cuban invested in the layer 2 Ethereum scaling solution Polygon. Prior to this, he had invested in more than 10 blockchain initiatives. Just recently, his NFT marketplace Lazy.com integrated with Polygon to enjoy low gas fees and high transaction speed.
Despite losing the fight to remove the “unworkable” language used in the infrastructure bill, a number of crypto veterans believe the fact that officials are trying to regulate this industry is very promising. “The tax reporting language is one of the clearest indications that Washington is prepared to accept crypto as a permanent part of the financial ecosystem,” said Jaret Seiberg, a financial analyst at Cowen Research Group.
