As big financial industry players like Fidelity Investments push SEC to approve Bitcoin-linked ETFs, crypto lobbying efforts meet resistance from US lawmakers
A strong push by Wall Street to open up access to Bitcoin investment is meeting resistance from a bipartisan group of lawmakers … Tweets: @pinboard , @ryannegri , @pinboard , @marcan42 , @zachary , @tante , @taylorlorenz , @max_hodak , @davecraige , @joemccann , @jonahblank , @sarahjamielewis , @pinboard , and @pinboard Tweets: @pinboard : I think it's time for us in the tech world to speak out and make it clear the emperor has no clothes here. Cryptocurrency is sustained by a mix of money laundering, vaporware, fraud, ransomware, gambling, and delusion. It has no social benefit except helping end first dates fast Ryan Negri / @ryannegri : Sitting at home in his mom's basement on Sunday, mad that everyone is making money but him, decides to post the most factually incorrect (incoherent) claims imaginable. Zero research. Just fury. https://twitter.com/... @pinboard : Because Bitcoin especially (through the Tether fraud) and cryptocurrency more generally is a pyramid scheme, of course Wall Street and venture capital need it to go mass market. It's the only road to getting out of their current investment at a profit https://www.politico.com/... Hector Martin / @marcan42 : It's 2021, climate change should be a P0 action item for the entire world, and instead here we are pissing away countries' worth of electricity to fund money laundering, fraud, pyramid schemes, and other insanity. It was cute when it started. It's not cute any more. https://twitter.com/... Zach Warmbrodt / @zachary : Wall Street is facing bipartisan resistance in Washington as firms like Fidelity and Anthony Scaramucci's SkyBridge Capital try to launch bitcoin investment products for the masses @kelmej https://www.politico.com/... @tante : This is absolutely essential. Everyone working in cryptocurrencies (or related scam terms such as “DeFi”, “DLT” or whatever BS they come up with) should be shunned. It should be as much of a black mark on your CV as working for Palantir is. https://twitter.com/... Taylor Lorenz / @taylorlorenz : Becoming addicted to reading crypto takes https://twitter.com/... Max Hodak / @max_hodak : He says, as I sit here playing a game that uses zero knowledge proofs for its map and has no central server, thinking about all of the stuff you could build from these parts https://twitter.com/... @davecraige : @Pinboard This thread is chock full of bad takes about internet money. Joe McCann / @joemccann : Weird flex, but ok. https://twitter.com/... Jonah Blank / @jonahblank : 1. I'm amazed that there is bipartisan support for anything. 2. I'm more amazed that it's for something useful: Protecting the public from #Bitcoin Ponzi scheme. 3. I'm certain that #WallStreet will soon overcome this minor setback. https://twitter.com/... Sarah Jamie Lewis / @sarahjamielewis : We live in a age where financial surveillance and censorship is one of the most effective tactics used to persecute marginalized communities and still people will make the argument that state surveillance and control over financial systems is not only good, but necessary. https://twitter.com/... @pinboard : Cryptocurrency solves no problems that it didn't first create, and most of those it doesn't solve. Smart contracts are neither of those things—at worst they're an API for fraud, or as @qrs put it, self-funding bug bounties at best https://twitter.com/... @pinboard : What we especially need to stress to regulators is that there's no relationship between the technical claims of cryptocurrency and our now over 13 years of experience. It's not decentralized, it's not a currency, it's not a store of value, and it's not a promising technology
Context & Ripple Effects
This story sits at the hinge between two arcs the coverage tracks separately: Wall Street's bid to wrap Bitcoin in fund-industry respectability, and the critics' case that such associations manufacture credibility rather than earn it. Fidelity and other large asset managers pressing the SEC is exactly what the New York Times later described as crypto gaining an illusion of respectability through high-status institutions — except here the institutions are asking for permission first.
The counterweight is Washington itself: a bipartisan group of lawmakers is resisting the lobbying effort, which matters because it shows the legitimacy gap running in both directions — establishment money wants in, but elected officials on both sides are willing to say no. That resistance foreshadows the more confrontational posture the coverage records later, including the SEC's reported interest in curbing retail staking that Brian Armstrong warned about in Coinbase's account of SEC hostility toward staking.
First-order effects
- Fidelity and the other firms backing Bitcoin-linked ETFs see their applications stall, since SEC approval now depends on overcoming opposition not just inside the agency but among bipartisan lawmakers in Washington.
- Crypto's Washington lobbying apparatus takes its highest-profile defeat yet: the industry's best-funded argument — that regulated Wall Street products would legitimize Bitcoin — fails to move the people who control access.
Second-order effects
- With ETF approval blocked, demand for Bitcoin exposure gets routed through clunkier vehicles like trusts trading at premiums, while exchanges such as Coinbase become the next target of regulator attention rather than beneficiaries of institutional cover.
- Bipartisan resistance lowers the cost for other officials and commentators to criticize crypto openly — a dynamic visible in the coverage where calling yield-farming a Ponzi became a defensible mainstream position after Sam Bankman-Fried himself conceded it was reasonable.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, institutional endorsement stops functioning as a shortcut to regulatory acceptance: the SEC and Congress treat each new crypto product category — ETFs, then staking, then whatever follows — as a separate fight, forcing the industry to win legitimacy product-by-product rather than borrowing it from respected brands.
- The structural outcome the coverage points toward is a hardening split between regulated finance's gatekeepers and an unregulated token economy, with venture capitalists still free to distribute tokens to the public precisely because products like ETFs remain blocked — the VC exit channel Stephen Diehl described operating amid speculative mania.
The trend: Crypto's path into mainstream finance is being decided gate-by-gate in Washington, where institutional sponsors amplify the industry's voice without securing its legitimacy.