It seems to me that the US government is doing this at the right time. We're not in the early stages of cryptocurrency. We've had 10 years for lots of new ideas to mature, and we're on the verge of the most promising of all - Etherium transitioning from PoW to PoS. I'd say this is somewhat late given the Bitcoin/Etherium's popularity among small investors with much to lose, immense greenhouse gas emissions, and facilitation of ransomware and dark markets.

Any crytocurrency good enough to be useful will be large enough to have an ecosystem that complies with these rules.

Our society regulates money exchange for a reason. It can be put to tremendous negative use - funding criminal activities, siphoning money from public investment, etc.