Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) loves to cast herself as the ultimate public defender of consumers and the arch-nemesis of bankers on Wall Street. However, with her recent record opposing popular mergers and shutting down regulatory reform for Bitcoin and its crypto-offspring, Warren has sided more with the major banks rather than new players that stand to empower consumers. In the last month, Warren has used…
Beginning this year, any individual with shares in an American domiciled company will be required to submit identifying information to FinCEN. This record collection from the US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is intended to “curb illicit finance” by requiring a national database of every “beneficial owner” of an LLC. As stipulated by the Corporate Transparency Act, passed by Congress in 2019 and later snuck into the National Defense Authorization Act in 2020,…
The Supreme Court recently delivered a decision on the constitutionality of one of the federal government’s most peculiar and least understood agencies, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Unlike the Fifth Circuit Court, which earlier ruled that the agency’s unique funding model violates the Constitution, Justice Clarence Thomas argued in the majority opinion the government’s funding of the CFPB “satisfies the Appropriations Clause”. The CFPB is a federal agency unlike…
Biden is waging war on financial privacy, and not everyone is happy. The last several weeks have weighed heavily on those in Bitcoin who use privacy tools and software. Between the ceremonious arrests across two continents, Justice Department press releases, FBI warnings, and souring mood in Washington, many popular services for both sovereign and private Bitcoin use have wound down their operations in the US,…
Is vaping safer than smoking? Obviously YES. Nicotine is not your enemy. But watch me debate those who think differently: Prof. Stanton Glantz, Stanford and Sheila Duffy of Action on Smoking and Health, Scotland. It’s Consumer Choice vs. neoprohibitionism. Who wins? YouTube: X:
Should regulations aimed at halting the financial activity of alleged criminals and terrorists be vastly expanded to include cryptocurrencies and firms that use them? Could this potentially harm entrepreneurial spirit and consumer freedom to deal in digital assets? Those were the questions asked this week in Washington as officials from the Treasury Department seek new tools to regulate and track Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies that would…
Last week, a discussion draft of the American Privacy Rights Act was published. Considering I’ve written about the need for a national privacy law for some time, I wanted to be sure I gave it a honest read. I will publish a more detailed summary on the Consumer Choice Center website here soon. Herein you’ll find my Q&A with Reason Magazine Senior Editor Elizabeth Nolan…
A video of my panel session at the 2024 Bitcoin Policy Summit on the current landscape of state and local bitcoin policies:
It’s not often that the head of a U.S. federal agency is given the red carpet treatment on Comedy Central, but for Jon Stewart, it’s to be expected. Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), appeared on the revamped Daily Show featuring Stewart as host on Monday nights, to hype up the FTC’s work battling the “monopolies” of the current era. Khan was certainly in…
Now that Congress has come to its senses about a forced divestiture plan to uncouple TikTok from the Chinese Communist Party, we’d be remiss not to explore other examples of how powers such as China influence American institutions. Let’s look at our justice system. In a handful of local court cases around the country, a Shenzhen-based firm has been clandestinely funding intellectual property lawsuits to help upend a major…