Failed regulations and policy making is actually empowering scammers and hackers and not protecting anyone.

A refrain you will often hear from regulators and politicians is how they are so “concerned about consumer protection” yet many of their rule making empowers scammers and nefarious hackers.

Take the U.S.’s current approach which is to provide absolutely no clarity or rule making and attempt to regulate the industry out of relevance through SEC enforcement actions.

Not only has this completely failed to kill crypto in any meaningful way, it has had the opposite effect of empowering scammers and hackers to prey on US consumers.

Since the “good people” in crypto who want to build responsible products that enrich the world have no clear framework to build on lest they be sued into bankruptcy in the U.S., the scammers and grifters often operating outside the U.S. step in. They have no care about receiving some “Wells Notice” from the SEC because they are often in localities with no extradition to the U.S. So they build and launch scam after scam with reckless abandon and it’s left up to the industry to try and self regulate.

We thankfully do have our share of marshalls and bounty hunters, but it is a drop in the bucket of what is really needed.

Clear and regulated lanes for good behaving projects to build on is needed that way any project not adhering to the guidelines would immediately be flagged as suspicious and to use caution when interacting with.

I know this is going to upset many who believe in the unregulated freedom of the crypto early days. But we need healthy regulations to grow into mature markets. Because with no regulations you get overrun by scammers and grifters.

And the irony of it all is that the people that claim to care about the “consumer” the most are doing the most damage at protecting anyone.

The longer crypto remains without clarity and clear rule making from politicians in their feeble and misguided efforts to stamp out something they clearly don’t understand the more consumers will be hurt by scams and grifters. That’s sad part of all this. It’s the users, often young and inexperienced, that will suffer the greatest consequences from this failed approach.

And when the next FTX or Terra Luna happens it will be paraded around like prize horse as to why crypto is bad and scary and you should stick to their centralized systems they completely control and can debase the money ad infinitum.

As this new bull run heats up you will unfortunately have a repeat of many of the scams of the past and some new one too. And many will suffer losses that never would have happened if there would have been clear rule making and regulations in place.