“Gary Gensler wants Crypto dead,” says ABRA Founder and CEO Bill Barhydt, “and he will do whatever it takes to kill it.”
Barhydt claims that Elizabeth Warren and Gensler run on a “Euro-Socialist” model because “she believes that people need protection from themselves, which is what a good Euro-Socialist does.”
By contrast, Barhydt believes “crypto is the future of banking. I believe this is the future of freedom.” And he is up in arms about the flurry of Wells notices recently issued by the SEC (an official letter notifying an individual or entity they are under investigation for potential securities law violations), something he hadn’t even heard of in decades of business.
“We’re not a band of criminals from Silicon Valley,” he laughs, “waiting in the wings for 30 years to pounce on a space ripe for the opportunity to just take advantage of everyone. That's not why we're here.”
What he is fighting for is serious stuff. The US is facing a grave challenge. “We have a debt burden that is so astronomical that the numbers are not comprehensible by a human being. Thirty-six trillion dollars, and it's growing by trillions a year. It's the biggest contributor to our budget: payments on the debt.”
For decades, the biggest holders of our debt have been China and Japan.
“Now, nobody wants to buy our debt anymore, because it's f*cking worthless. So the biggest buyer of our debt is the Federal Government itself, the fed and the banks that they force to buy the debt. So every bank in this country is insolvent by any realistic measure.”
To understand how to fix all this, he says, look to Argentina.
“The miracle of what they did was they said, we're going to get the hell out of the way, because for 100 years we've tried intervention. And for 100 years we've basically caused our currency to go to zero. All of a sudden the government got out of the way and inflation went to 2% within weeks, right? And the economy is booming.”
While many would argue that the combined effect of drought and the new austerity-induced surge in the poverty rate in Argentina has not created a “booming” economy, Barhydt asserts that, in the long term, the correct governmental policy should be “do no harm and that means get out of the way.”
Crypto is where, he says, “we don't need Big Brother's help. We actually need Big Brother to get out of the way. And that's the political fight that we're having now.”
Barhydt makes a distinction between short term blips and long term growth in Crypto.
“With a global currency like Bitcoin, it doesn’t matter long term who wins the presidency. In the short term you can do things like China did, where they banned mining. But they can’t ban individuals from holding crypto. It's just ones and zeros that you can store in your pocket. You can't ban that. Even China knows that. Can they stop it? No, it's the Internet. You can make it difficult on the edges, which is what Elizabeth Warren has tried to do. There's been a concerted effort to unbank the entire space. Every CEO I know has had multiple bank accounts shut down. So yes, in the short term they can make it very painful. But we're all still here.”
To learn more about Barhydt’s take on:
Written by Adam Gilad
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