Why Crypto Is Now ‘Facing an Existential Threat’ in Washington: Perianne Boring

Between new regulatory actions taken by the Securities and Exchange Commission and new developments in Congress, crypto is back in the crosshairs.

According to Chamber of Digital Commerce founder and CEO Perianne Boring, it’s not hyperbole to say that the very survival of crypto in the United States now hangs in the balance.

“We are facing an existential threat today in Washington,” Boring said in a new Coinage interview Friday (watch above.) “It's important that the industry understands that in the Senate, Elizabeth Warren has put forward a bill that would effectively ban this industry in the United States … she's been able to recruit 19 co-sponsors to this bill, so we have 19% of the U.S. Senate today on record wanting to effectively ban cryptocurrencies in the United States.”

Given that this is an election year, expectations for any critical crypto legislation have been low. However, this week, House Financial Services ranking member Maxine Waters told Politico that the House may be closing a deal for a bill that would lay the groundwork for approving stablecoins. That could finally provide regulatory clarity for one of the largest pieces of the crypto industry. Even Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called on Congress to pass stablecoin legislation in her testimony before the Committee on Financial Services earlier this week.

As Boring sees it, Congress providing that clarity could be a huge bullish unlock for Bitcoin and the rest of crypto. 

“The large majority of Bitcoin transactions are done through stablecoins,” she said. “[There are] many major institutions and organizations that are very interested in entering the stablecoin ecosystem, but they feel like they do need specific regulation and clarity on stablecoins.”

Given the positive developments mixed with Yellen’s pressure, Boring increased her expectations that Congress could approve a framework for stablecoins from a 50-50 coin flip to 75%.

But the battle to regulate crypto will not just be won or lost in Congress. This week, the SEC issued their own rule paving a path forward to bring regulating decentralized finance, or DeFi, into their fold. Elsewhere, crypto advocates have also increasingly sounded the alarm over a new push by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) to track and monitor energy use among Bitcoin miners. Some have warned that the EIA’s move could expand well beyond Bitcoin miners and into monitoring data centers, or cloud providers, and have far reaching implications in artificial intelligence.

“This has the potential to start a legal precedent that would put the government in a position to pick who has the right to purchase energy and who does not,” Boring said, noting that her advocacy group represents more than 50% of all mining power in America. “They want to be able to control who gets access to energy and who does not. That is not how it's supposed to work. I think there's constitutional consequences to that. It's extremely important that we all band together to ensure that is never the conversation we're having about energy markets in the United States.”

Watch the full interview with Chamber of Digital Commerce founder and CEO Perianne Boring above.

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