How? If CEX operations are restricted in the US due to excessive, antiquated, or ambiguous regulations, citizens would be left with fewer ways to acquire these assets including research and hobby usage.
To continue with Molly’s drug analogy: look at psilocybin, where academic, hobbyist, and medical research in them has been delayed for many decades due to unreasonable legal restrictions and ideological campaigns against them.
> If CEX operations are restricted in the US due to excessive, antiquated, or ambiguous regulations, citizens would be left with fewer ways to acquire these assets including research and hobby usage
They can publish hypothetical blockchains in peer-reviewed journals and sell overseas. The point is to separate "acquir[ing] these assets," which has been a money pit, from the potential benefits of the data structure and technology.
The emerging system appears to be China outsourcing this work to Hong Kong and America to London. We don't want the mess at home. But nobody wants to write off the people and projects.
A “hypothetical blockchain” sounds useless if it cannot legally be applied in practice. It’s the sort of draconian policy that HN commenters would abhor if it were anything but blockchain.
To use these networks—and to test & objectively measure them—you need to be able to acquire tokens.
Like it or not, crypto is going to stay. If the US pulls out the vacuum will be filled by those that the Americans consider criminal jurisdictions - Russia, China etc. or hopefully by competing powers - EU, Japan. The opportunities here as an alternate financial system will not be ignored by the rest of the world.
The desire that this should be confined to academic is nothing but a pipe dream at this point.
To continue with Molly’s drug analogy: look at psilocybin, where academic, hobbyist, and medical research in them has been delayed for many decades due to unreasonable legal restrictions and ideological campaigns against them.