[frankbreetz]

Drug laws caused the average person to be terrified of drugs. If the average person becomes as scared of crypto as they are of drugs, crypto may exist, it won't be a mainstream product.

There are no vc funded cocaine or heroine companies.

[dcolkitt]

Except crypto is global, and even easier to move across borders than drugs. Despite the government's sincerest hopes, American laws don't extend to foreign countries.

So, yes there will still be tons of VC funded crypto startups, they'll just be based in Malta or Israel or Singapore. And even in the most draconian enforcement regime, the US government will be incapable of stopping even 1% of American citizens who choose to interact with these protocols. VPNs are ubiquitous, highly secure and dirt cheap.

It is possible to nearly completely stamp out crypto usage in a single country, just as it is possible to nearly completely stamp out drug usage in a single country. But it requires CCP-level authoritarianism. Neither US voters nor the US judiciary has the stomach for that. You'd have to be extremely anti-crypto to think it justifies the creation of a Chinese-style great firewall and the associated surveillance state.

[cinquemb]

> You'd have to be extremely anti-crypto to think it justifies the creation of a Chinese-style great firewall and the associated surveillance state.

Even then, I see plenty of chinese users (talking in mandarin) on various forums/servers using decentralized protocols, hardly that effective.

Pipe dream laws for pipe dream deficit spending to continue to prop up zombie companies and industries.

[verdverm]

In jest, I'd point out Purdue and the Sacklers