PSA: This FUD cycle on SB1241 is over-hyped, take political action and then BUY!
There's a number of reasons why not to be worried about SB1241. Primarily, this article from zero hedge came out and the bear cycle started.
- Only 3% to 4% of proposed bills ever get passed!
- The president has to sign off on the bill as well.
- Progressive leaning Dems and Libertarian GOP won't blindly support a bill that has such strong verbiage on civil forfeiture
- This bill was introduced on May 25th, nobody freaked out until the Zero hedge article
- We already have extremely fascistic laws about constitutional rights along our borders. If you live 100 miles from a border or the ocean, you have zero rights and can be detained indefinitely without charges, and have all of your assets seized. This is generally not routinely enforced except in the case of arresting immigrants. So this Senate Bill is just a tiny drop in the bucket.
- Laws like this are what the ETH Foundation and BTC Foundation are for. Email & CALL them and ask them to LOBBY against this.
You can actually email or call ( calling is better ) the people who proposed this. See below. Go to their website and find their information. If you live in these states below, YOU really should contact them.
- Sen. Chuck Grassley [R- Iowa] (202) 224-3744
- Sen. Dianne Feinstein [D- California] (202) 224-3841
- Sen. John Cornyn [R-Texas] IMPORTANT: HE IS MAJORITY WHIP (202) 224-2934
- Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse [D-Rhode Island] (202) 224-2921
- Also contact your Senator even if they are not on this list. They can bring the pressure. ( GO HERE and look up by state. )
NOW - this is important. Here is a rough script for when you call them:
Hello, I see that you are a cosponsor on SB1241. While I do support the idea of increasing consumer safety in the digital currency market, this bill is a catastrophic nuclear option against an entire industry. Criminals like the Ransomware hackers should be investigated, but there are currently hundreds of thousands of consumer level digital asset investors who are working class people in the united states, and your bill threatens to cause them severe harm.
Your bill could be interpreted by the TSA as a means to imprison and freeze bank accounts of working class people who are unaware that they must declare their digital net worth at every border crossing. Imagine if you had to declare how much Apple stock you owned every time you fly? It suggests a severe violation of the fourth amendment and will not hold up in the supreme court. The industry does need to have consumer protections though, so please work with the Bitcoin Foundation and the Ethereum Foundation to ensure legislation that helps working class investors and voters.
Also, please support Title II Net Neutrality in all future legislation. An open internet is the backbone of the entire technology sector and switching to a tiered internet with fastlanes for big businesses will only create more barriers for small businesses that drive innovation. It will make us less competitive in the global market. It will drive talent out of our country.
We're not trying to lobby them, we're trying to do away with them altogether.
If you want a bloodless revolution, you pay them a small fixed percentage not to fight you in the first place. Then you build a better system and pay them to go away altogether.
HOWEVER, a lot of people want better representation through technology, NOT an absolute removal of delegated power altogether. That's how you get a power vacuum where authoritarianism can take root. Arguably that's happening already to some extent.
A lot of bitcoin investors see the state as non-essential, but that's just not reality. They currently hold a monopoly on violence and all crypto is ultimately valued in dollars, which they have absolute authority to seize.
I see near-direct democracy with delegated committees and automated public budgets as the future. To get there you can't just act like a subversive absolutionist all the time. You have to start laying out the scaffolding to the next governance paradigm, and working with congress now is simply to prevent them from burning down the foundations of the next paradigm.
I want to remove government that exists by force. If people want to create a voluntary government - like an HOA - I don't see anything wrong with that.
That's a dangerous assertion for you to make, and for everyone living in the US. It is also the more expensive option in the long run.
I just reread my comment and you probably reread it wrong. I didn't mean I want to use force, I want to remove governments that rule by force (pretty much all current ones). I don't think that necessarily requires force, just a better monetary system that replaces their's to make their power structure collapse.