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Of meme coins and choke points š
Did the Biden administration debank crypto firms? And is Trump's meme coin legal? These are Friday's burning questions.
Andrew Hayward
January 24, 2025
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š What you need to know
Itās a new era for crypto under President Trump, prompting questions like: Were crypto firms really debanked under the Biden administration? And can the President of the United States really have his own meme coin?
On Friday, the House Oversight Committee wrote to several crypto industry heavyweightsāincluding Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Marc Andreessenāto let them know that it has begun investigating the growing claims that crypto firms were secretly debanked in recent years under a plot thatās been dubbed āOperation Choke Point 2.0.ā
āThe Committee is investigating whether this debanking practice originates from the financial institutions themselves or from either implicit or explicit pressure from government regulators,ā Chair James Comer wrote.
Speaking of pressure from regulators, Senator Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday prodded agencies to look into Trumpās meme coin. However, experts tell Decrypt that the legalities around Trumpās Solana token are difficult to determine due to it being uncharted terrainā¦ and in part also because there arenāt clear rules around the crypto industry.
āThe irony is, we don't know for sure what is legal and what isn't legal here, because the Biden administration essentially declined to tell us,ā Brian Frye, a law professor at the University of Kentucky, told Decrypt.
š¬ Quote of the Day
āThe committee appears to be a venue for corruption, allowing well-connected billionaires to put government policies in place that enrich them while hurting ordinary Americans.ā
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