Etiket: Betustra

Writing in praise of Balaji Srinivasan’s 2022 book, “The Network State: How to Start a New Country,” Marc Andreessen observed that “Balaji has the highest rate of output per minute of good new ideas of anybody I’ve ever met.”

More than that, the book itself showcased a different, if no less impressive, talent: Balaji’s knack for launching memetic movements.

The Network State is a plan for techno-utopians to abandon antiquated nation states and build geographically distributed technocratic sovereignties. At a time when the political debate is between those invested in current institutions and those who want to build anew, the Network State has gone viral as the leading exit strategy.

This is due in large part to Balaji himself, who has used his prominence and elite connections to spread the Network State meme, including with the Network State Podcast and by launching the Network School this year. His critics (primarily from the left) have accused the Network State of engaging in fascist-chic cosplay and establishing a libertarian enclave that entrenches an outdated Westphalian-style sovereignty based on territorial boundedness and diplomatic recognition that does not serve digital nations.

Suffice it to say, none of those critiques, counter-movements nor, for that matter, the recent election of a reform-minded technocracy to the White House, has sapped any energy from the Network State meme. There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.

This profile is part of CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2024 package. For all of this year’s nominees, click here.

Patrick McHenry has spent much of his last two years in Congress on a long-shot quest to get a complex oversight regime for the crypto sector passed into law, and he failed. But failing in Congress isn’t always permanent.

McHenry, the outgoing Republican chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, embarked on an uphill battle in 2022 when he took on the cause of an industry that had just suffered widespread ruin and reputational devastation. He decided that digital assets regulation was a goal worth spending much of his political capital on, fighting a pitched battle across committees, parties and chambers of Congress to finally get his Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21) onto the floor of the House of Representatives in May of 2024. 

The vote not only passed the crypto market-structure bill, marking the furthest advance of industry legislation, but it also threw an impossible-to-ignore spotlight on its bipartisan support, with 279 Republicans and 136 Democrats supporting the bill, as younger Democrats were eager to throw off the guidance of their party leaders to make something happen. But it still wasn’t enough to pressure the Senate to approve a matching measure, which would have been needed to clear its path toward becoming a law.

Now that McHenry’s party will also control the Senate, there’s good reason to believe a similar effort will build on FIT21 and pass both chambers in the coming session, and then be signed by the recent convert to crypto, President-elect Donald Trump. McHenry may not be there when it happens, but his fingerprints will be all over any comprehensive crypto legislation that ultimately crosses Trump’s desk.

This profile is part of CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2024 package. For all of this year’s nominees, click here [INSERT LINK BEFORE PUBLISHING].

If the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is the gateway for crypto firms to operate in the U.K., then Matthew Long holds the key. As the FCA’s director of payments and digital assets, Long has overseen a strict regime that requires firms to follow anti-money laundering rules, resulting in only four crypto firms being approved to do business in the country in 2024. Overall, 48 firms have been approved out of the 365 that have applied.

And the regulator’s power is only set to increase. Long, who leads policy development for the crypto sector, held a series of roundtables earlier this year on the U.K.’s incoming crypto regime and the FCA also said that it intends to release a series of papers to gather industry thoughts on stablecoins, trading platforms, staking and more, with the intention of firming up final rules for the sector by 2026.

Long will thus be building an even bigger gate with more permissions and a whole new authorization regime, leaving the industry waiting outside, wondering if they will be able to get in.

This profile is part of CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2024 package. For all of this year’s nominees, click here [UPDATE BEFORE PUBLISHING].