If a company can't use a piece of accounting software that's gaining worldwide relevance, that's the company's problem.

If an entire country can't use a piece of accounting software that's gaining worldwide relevance, that's the country's problem.

And the owners of that accounting software can make the case that they should be allowed to be used in the country. Lots of companies do that, and some are even successful!

So you have to ask yourself... why isn't Coinbase making that argument?

> So you have to ask yourself... why isn't Coinbase making that argument?

Coinbase has (obviously) always been a strong advocate of distributed ledger technology, is constantly warning of the ramifications of this software being de-facto banned in the US, and has publicly stated that they have contingencies in place for moving offshore if it's economically unviable to be headquartered in and/or serve the US market.

They've been making that argument since 2012.

> has publicly stated that they have contingencies in place for moving offshore if it's economically unviable to be headquartered in and/or serve the US market

They should go. Crypto has a niche outside major economies and developed countries with the rule of law.

If you go back to the 1930s, bankers protested similarly (as they did again in the late 90s). Turns out freewheeling fraud isn’t a determinant for financial centrality. Worst case: we can revisit if London or Singapore make this work, given they’re rapidly approaching being the only financial centres who will stomach this.

Here in the real world that is the software company's problem. Countries do not change their laws just to make some random accounting software company happy, unless they bribe some politicians first.

Accounting software have tons of local adaptations.

>Countries do not change their laws just to make some random accounting software company happy

Countries change laws to give their citizens access to important products. It's not about the company.

The USA didn't decide to rewrite existing telephony laws for VOIP in the 90s because they wanted to give Skype a handout, they did it because they understood the potential benefits of internet telephony for the populous.

> Accounting software have tons of local adaptations.

You can't locally adapt a ledger that is globally shared across all the other countries. Either you allow the ledger in your country or you don't.

> Countries change laws to give their citizens access to important products. It's not about the company.

And Congress was lobbied to do that and they declined. Is your argument that 'they should have done it' means 'the SEC isn't allowed to enforce existing regulations'?

Good luck with that “But we really wanna!” argument in court.

I don't really care. I've got a large enough international stock allocation that if the USA loses its status as the financial capital of the world over the next several decades, I'll be just fine in retirement.

Companies like Coinbase and a16z have publicly stated their intentions to establish international arms to hedge against the US regulatory environment, and there's no reason my portfolio can't follow their lead.