Congress presents a bill to legitimize compliant cryptocurrencies

This to me seems like a first move in a negotiation for an approach to a bill. The bill seeks to legitimize cryptocurrency by offering "protection" from the risk of government interference. Government interference is one of the main risk factories for all who interact with or hold cryptocurrencies and any bill which can reduce these risks is at least worth looking into.

Members of Congress are working on legislation that would provide protections to currencies if they meet certain minimum conditions on preventing the currencies from being used by terrorists, drug traffickers, and others engaged in unlawful business practices. The plan would bring digital currency out of the shadows and is expected to be met with support from libertarian leaning members of Congress and some opposition from Treasury officials who don’t want competition for the dollar.

The question is what do current cryptocurrency users and the crypto community in general receive in exchange for compliance? So far in exchange for compliance we receive increased risk and uncertainty which means we get no security or protection from complying. In general, even attempting to comply is costly and difficult because there are no best practices or standards and in many cases the legal and accounting fees just aren't feasible for most startups. There has to be some way to make the non-interference rewarding enough to encourage people to comply due to the fact that the reward for the burden of compliance outweighs the risk.

They continued that “the law needs to be changed to protect digital currencies from federal government harassment to make sure that a complaint currency can be backed by value, the currency cannot be treated like a security or investment, and that transfers are protected against taxation. The bottom line is that Congress needs to remove all the obstacles to a vibrant digital currency that has voluntarily taken the initiative to keep the bad guys from using it.”

If they do this then I fully support it. Steem Dollars treated as a currency instead of a security would dramatically reduce the task complexity, by removing the risk of IRS/SEC. We need in my opinion some cryptocurrencies which are low risk mainstream legitimate, whilst high risk illegitimate cryptocurrencies shall always exist for activists who are dedicated to take the risk.

References

1. http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/19/congress-considering-validating-bitcoin/