These Investors Say Crypto Is Dead in the US, What’s Up?

Liputan6.com, Jakarta Tech investor and crypto supporter Chamath Palihapitiya gave a pretty harsh view of the development of the crypto industry in the US.

“Crypto is dead in America,” said Palihapitiya in a Podcast, quoted from CNBC, Tuesday (25/4/2023).

Palihapitiya blames crypto’s demise in large part on regulators, who have become much more aggressive in their pursuit of bad actors in the industry.

US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Gary Gensler said crypto trading platforms must comply with strict US securities laws.

In answering questions before lawmakers recently, Gensler linked the Silicon Valley Bank collapse to the crypto industry.

“You even see Gensler blaming the banking crisis on crypto. United States authorities are firmly pointing their guns at crypto,” explained Palihapitiya.

The SEC has recently stepped up enforcement of the crypto industry, clamping down on companies and projects that regulators say are selling unregistered securities.

In February 2023 the SEC proposed rules that would change which crypto companies can hold customer assets. Then in March, the SEC issued a notice to crypto exchange Coinbase warning the company it had identified a potential violation of US securities laws.

Finally, last week, the SEC accused crypto asset trading platform Bittrex and its former CEO with operating an unregistered exchange.

In early 2021, Palihapitiya had predicted on CNBC bitcoin would increase from USD 39,000 or the equivalent of IDR 583.1 million (assuming an exchange rate of IDR 14,953 per US dollar) at that time to USD 100,000 or the equivalent of IDR 1.4 billion, and then increase to USD 200,000 or equivalent to IDR 2.9 billion.

Then in 2021, just before the peak, Palihapitiya said bitcoin had effectively replaced gold.