Nearly every day as of late, scary headlines herald the demise of cryptocurrencies while federal governments and regulators all over the world crackdown on the enigmatic digital assets. ‘SEC Working Overtime to Take Control of Crypto Markets’, ‘People’s Bank of China Rules All Crypto-Related Trading Illegal’, ‘Russia’s Central Bank Wants to Slow Down Cryptocurrency Payments’, ‘Indian Authorities Consider Taxing Cryptocurrency Trades’, to name a few. Indeed, it’s no secret that there is no love lost between the Powers That Be and the crypto world, as decentralized blockchain technology has opened up a realm where the establishment can neither track nor regulate its citizens’ financial activities. It’s precisely this loss of control that drives governments crazy, and also what makes cryptocurrencies so attractive to average people. Mainstream media outlets aid and abet the authorities’ efforts to discredit digital assets by creating and feeding into negative hype with loud gloom-and-doom headlines that make the crypto world look shady and unreliable. A piece recently appearing in The New Yorker entitled Pumpers, Dumpers, and Shills: The Skycoin Saga does just that. On its surface, the article appears to be a hit piece on a specific crypto project and its founder, but, on reading between the lines, it becomes apparent that it is really an attack on cryptocurrencies in general. Cryptocurrencies and the SEC The real intent becomes ...
