Congress
Spotify’s Discovery Mode Under Scrutiny by Congress (Again)
Members of Congress are once again taking aim at Spotify’s controversial Discovery Mode feature, which allows artists and labels to receive a lower royalty rate on select tracks in exchange for higher priority in the platform’s algorithms. In a letter obtained by Billboard, dated March 29, 2022 and addressed to Spotify founder, CEO and chairman Daniel Ek, Reps. Yvette D. Clarke (D-NY), Judy Chu (D-CA) and Tony Cardenas (D-CA) – co-chairs of the Congressional Caucus on Multicultural Media – express concerns that Discovery Mode “lacks transparency” for both artists and consumers and ask the company to publish “on a monthly basis the name of every track enrolled in the program” and the agreed-upon discounted royalty rate for each. Variety first reported on the letter. “Choosing to accept...
Law Decoded: Arab States of the Gulf open up to digital asset services, March 14–21
Last week got off to an antsy start as the clause that many interpreted as a direct route to ban proof-of-work-(PoW)-based cryptocurrencies made a sudden comeback to the draft of the European Union’s key directive on digital assets. Many in the crypto policy space got immediate flashbacks to other instances of harmful last-minute additions to must-pass legislation days and hours before the vote. It all ended well, though, as the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs voted against the draft that contained the hostile language. Over in the United States, monetary policy kept growing more political, as evidenced by Sarah Bloom Raskin, President Joe Biden’s pick for the Federal Reserve’s vice chair for supervision, being forced to withdraw her nomination due to a Senate gridlock. Ukrainia...
Congress members concerned SEC stifling innovation with crypto scrutiny
In a bipartisan letter put forward by Republican Minnesota Congressman Tom Emmer, a cohort of Congress members has written to Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler, challenging the regulator’s scrutiny of cryptocurrency firms and expressing concern that “overburdensome” investigation may be suffocating the crypto industry. They suggest the SEC is drowning companies in paperwork in contravention of the SEC’s stated aims and mandated jurisdiction. Emmer tweeted to his 51,000 followers: “My office has received numerous tips from crypto and blockchain firms that SEC Chair @GaryGensler’s information reporting ‘requests’ to the crypto community are overburdensome, don’t feel particularly… voluntary… and are stifling innovation.” This is why I sent a bipartisa...
GOP Stooge Herschel Walker Brazenly Questions Theory Of Evolution
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Sean Rayford / Getty Herschel Walker certainly deserves accolades for his time on the football field and nothing can take away those achievements, but his current bid for a U.S. Senate seat is raising some eyebrows. While the former NFL and USFL star isn’t engaging in any debates ahead of primaries, Walker was seen questioning the theory of evolution with the same expertise as his hopeful political career. As noted by Huffington Post, Walker made an appearance at the Sugar Hill Church in Georgia over the weekend. The environment wasn’t a hostile one for the political neophyte, but one moment stood out clearly among others. “At one time, science said man came from apes, did it not? If that is true, why are there still apes? Think about it,” Walker said, de...
Crypto industry seeks to educate, influence US lawmakers as it faces increasing regulation
Interaction between the cryptocurrency industry and Capitol Hill is becoming ever more intensive as efforts to regulate crypto grow in tandem with its popularity. The surge in crypto industry lobbying last year was given some concrete parameters in February by crypto analytics startup Crypto Head. It released a report showing that the crypto companies that spent the most money on lobbying in 2021 were Robinhood, Ripple Labs, Coinbase and the Blockchain Association. These organizations were the lobbying leaders during the past five years as well, although with different rankings. Here is what the United States crypto-lobbying landscape looks like today. Metrics of influence Robinhood spent $1.35 million on lobbying in 2021 and was the only crypto-related organization to spend more than $1 m...
Law Decoded: Bitcoin’s censorship resistance capacity enters the spotlight, Feb. 14–21
Amid the barrage of last week’s regulatory news, from rumors of Joe Biden’s upcoming executive order on digital assets to another round of the Russian government’s crypto tug of war, the storyline that was arguably the most consequential for the mainstream narrative on the social effects of crypto has been the one around the Canadian government’s standoff with the Freedom Convoy. The government’s invocation of emergency powers to put down a protest movement — combined with the movement’s financial infrastructure being one of the main attack vectors — has led many observers to appreciate with renewed vigor Bitcoin’s capacity to resist state financial censorship. If a government as “civilized” as Canada’s can arbitrarily cut off a group it doesn’t like from the financial system, then any sta...
BTC helps our effort to unseat a 20+ year incumbent: Aarika Rhodes on Bitcoin Day
Aarika Rhodes, an elementary school teacher-turned congressional candidate, recently featured in the Bitcoin Day Sacramento 2022 event to discuss the impact of Bitcoin (BTC) in local politics. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Rhodes highlighted the difficulty for grassroots candidates like herself to compete against established members of the US Congress. Our campaign has officially adopted Lighting for campaign contributions.⚡️ This revolutionary technology creates accessibility and looks towards the future. I am excited to provide this option to our supporters across all 50 states. #Bitcoin — Aarika for CA-32 (@AarikaRhodes) November 30, 2021 “If it wasn’t for Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, a grassroots campaign like ours wouldn’t have made it this far with the amount o...
Concerns over Fed nominee may stop Senate from confirming Biden’s picks: Report
Members of the U.S. Senate Banking committee have reportedly divided along party lines regarding President Joe Biden’s pick of Sarah Bloom Raskin as vice chair for supervision for the Board of Governors at the Federal Reserve. According to a Tuesday report from Reuters, Senator Pat Toomey, the ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee, said he had asked the 12 Republican senators on the committee to not attend a meeting in which members were expected to vote on President Biden’s nominees for the Fed. Toomey reportedly said that Democratic leadership can proceed with “five of the six nominees” put forth by the President and expect Republican support — with the exception of Raskin. Republicans’ boycott is reportedly due to concerns over allegations that the prospective Fed vice chair fo...
US lawmaker pushes for state-level regulations on stablecoins at hearing on digital assets
Whether regulations on stablecoins and digital assets should be addressed at the state or federal level was the topic of discussion among at least two U.S. lawmakers in a hearing for the House Committee on Financial Services. Speaking virtually at a Tuesday hearing titled “Digital Assets and the Future of Finance: The President’s Working Group on Financial Markets’ Report on Stablecoins,” North Carolina Representative and ranking committee member Patrick McHenry asked the committee to consider state-level regulatory frameworks in lieu of a comprehensive federal law on stablecoins. In response to McHenry, Jean Nellie Liang, the Under Secretary for Domestic Finance at the U.S. Treasury Department, said there was no explicit law governing stablecoins and digital assets at the federal level bu...
Jack Dorsey on UBI: Bitcoin encourages transparency, long-term thinking
Twitter co-founder and Block (previously Square) CEO Jack Dorsey discussed the implications of a Bitcoin (BTC)-powered universal basic income (UBI) strategy with US congressional candidate and a full-time elementary school teacher, Aarika Rhodes. “Obscurity of information forces and incentivizes people to negative (financial) behaviors that don’t work for them, their community or family,” said Dorsey while pointing out the lack of transparency within the existing centralized financial system. “If there’s one thing to focus on in Bitcoin — the operations are transparent, the code is transparent, the policy is transparent.” This base foundation of BTC is what Dorsey believes has the potential to solve numerous use cases and problems as a direct result of using fiat currency. Through bu...
Fossils vs. Renewables, PoW vs. PoS: Key policy issues around crypto mining in the U.S.
On Jan. 27, a group of eight U.S. lawmakers, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren, sent letters to the world’s six largest Bitcoin mining companies, demanding to reveal the detailed data on their electricity consumption. This isn’t the first time Senator Warren requested this information from a mining operation — last month a similar letter was sent to Greenidge Generation, which uses a natural gas plant to power its facility. These moves highlight the increasing regulatory pressure on crypto mining businesses in the United States. But, as last week’s Congress hearing showed, the growing scrutiny might turn out to be an opportunity to align the mining sector’s development with the broader political push for clean energy. Here are some of the key themes around crypto mining that have captured th...
House members urge US Treasury Secretary to clarify definition of broker in infrastructure law
A bipartisan group of members from the U.S. House of Representatives called on Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to clarify the language in the infrastructure bill signed into law in November around the definition of “broker.” In a Wednesday letter, House Financial Services Committee ranking member Patrick McHenry and ten other representatives urged Yellen to reference the Keep Innovation in America Act to “ensure that any future guidance” in the November infrastructure bill would provide “the necessary clarity to the digital asset ecosystem.” In addition to the reporting requirements, the lawmakers said that the Treasury Department should narrow the scope of the information a broker can capture, as it would risk “the creation of an unlevel playing fie...
