Op-ed: Crypto and blockchain need a trellis, not just a weed killer, says Scaramucci
Anthony Scaramucci, founder and co-managing partner of SkyBridge Capital.
Jared Siskin/Patrick McMullan | Getty Images
You might not know this, but Goldilocks and the Three Bears is actually a story about the debate currently surrounding regulation of the blockchain and crypto industries.
Some people say there’s too little regulation. Some people say there’s too much. Some people think somewhere in the middle is just right.
But nobody can agree about where that “somewhere” is, we argue about it for years, and Goldilocks gets on Twitter to angrily threaten to move to another country where the soup is more to her taste.
Fortunately, “Too little, too much, or just right” is just one of the many ways we can have a civil conversation about how to regulate this industry. And it happens to be a terribly oversimplified one. A more nuanced framework that deserves much more attention than it receives: “Stop bad, support good.”
For a long time now, Gary Gensler’s SEC has been the (de facto, not de jure) most prominent and outspoken regulator of cryptocurrencies.
The agency nearly doubled the size of its crypto assets enforcement unit last May. It demanded over a million dollars from Kim Kardashian for her role in pumping crypto last October (big score for everyone who had the foresight to put “SEC publishes a press release with Kim K’s name in the headline” on their 2022 bingo card). It cracked down on Kraken’s staking program with a big fat (for Kraken) $30 million fine last month.
The fanbase cheering on these moves isn’t exactly huge.
Even from within, other commissioners—like Hester Peirce—have publicly criticized the agency’s approach. Its tug-of-war with other agencies, including but not limited to the CFTC, continues despite President Biden’s call for harmony in his executive order on crypto last March. And, of course, industry executives are happy to offer their two (non-interest bearing, of course) cents.
Many in the crypto industry want this “regulation by enforcement” to stop. But as Alison Frankel at Reuters and former SEC Office of Internet Enforcement Chief John Reed Stark both suggested earlier this year, there’s probably no end in sight.
Why? Because this is what the SEC does best. Enforcement is in its DNA.
The SEC is a weed killer. We can’t get mad at a weed killer for not growing fruit. At best, we can argue about what does or doesn’t constitute a weed, and whether or not the thing that just got sprayed should’ve been.
The approach the U.S. federal government has taken to regulating this industry is a bit like spray coating your entire garden with Weed B Gon (not an endorsement) and then, waiting for the harvest.
This is exactly why “Too little, too much, just right” isn’t sufficient. But “Stop bad, support good” helps us realize that we are missing half the puzzle.
Well-crafted government policy doesn’t just stop bad actors. It also promotes progress and prosperity. It’s as much of a trellis for good plants as it is a weed killer. That’s what we’ve lost sight of.
That’s why it can’t be just the SEC. We need a more holistic approach at the federal level.
That’s why we need to advocate for public-private partnerships like Abu Dhabi’s recently announced $2B initiative to back blockchain and Web3 startups or the older UNICEF Venture Fund launched in collaboration with Giga to make investments with crypto in early-stage tech startups.
That’s why we need to raise awareness about big grants supporting research and education at the university level like Ripple’s University Blockchain Research Initiative, the Wyoming Advanced Blockchain Lab made possible by a donation from IOHK at the University of Wyoming or the Algorand Foundation’s ACE program.
And that’s why we need government officials to balance the narrative, helping the American public to see that it’s about keeping the baby as much as it is about throwing out the bathwater—whether that’s making financial services inclusive and more frictionless, financing new and exciting applications of blockchain tech or simply supporting the spirit of American innovation.
Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital, an alternative asset manager and SEC-registered investment adviser. The author’s firm, Skybridge Capital, has multiple investments in cryptocurrencies, including the Algorand Foundation’s ALGO token, and crypto and blockchain-related companies, including Kraken.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., does a TV interview in the Russell Senate Office Building on Tuesday, June 3, 2025.
Bill Clark | Cq-roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Wednesday criticized the Trump administration’s decision to take a 10% stake in embattled chipmaker Intel, calling the investment “a step towards socialism.”
Intel announced last month that the U.S. government made an $8.9 billion investment in Intel common stock, purchasing 433.3 million shares at a price of $20.47 per share, giving it a 10% stake in the company. Intel noted that the price the government paid was a discount to the current market price.
Rand said government ownership is “a bad idea.”
“It’s always a mistake to say, ‘Well we have this one bad policy, all right, we’ll tolerate a little socialism, but we don’t want anymore,” Paul told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday. “I think it’s a bad idea.”
President Donald Trump said on Truth Social last month that the government’s stake in the chipmaker is a “great Deal for America, and, also, a great Deal for INTEL.”
Trump has taken an increasingly heavy hand in the private sector, raising concern among conservative lawmakers like Paul, who have long opposed big government. In August, the Trump administration said the government would take 15% of certain Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices chip sales to China. The Pentagon bought a $400 million equity stake in rare-earth miner MP Materials. It also took a “golden share” in U.S. Steel as part of a deal to allow Nippon Steel to buy the U.S. industrial giant.
Among the most vocal supporters in Congress of Trump’s Intel proposal has been Sen. Bernie Sanders, the self-described democratic socialist from Vermont. Sanders, a longtime and vocal Trump critic, told news outlets last month that, “Taxpayers should not be providing billions of dollars in corporate welfare to large, profitable corporations like Intel without getting anything in return.”
But Rand said it’s not smart to involve the government in the free market.
“I worry that the free market movement, the movement that was a big part of the Republican Party, is being diminished over time,” Rand said.
WATCH: Sen. Rand Paul on U.S. government’s stake in Intel: It’s a step towards socialism
DeepL CEO Jaroslaw “Jarek” Kutylowski.
DeepL
German startup DeepL on Wednesday said it was expanding beyond artificial intelligence-powered translation into general AI agents focused on businesses.
The term “agent” refers to an AI tool that can carry out tasks in the background in response to user prompts.
DeepL Agent is designed to complete “repetitive, time-intensive tasks across a wide variety of functions” according to the company. It can responds to natural langauge commands from a users. DeepL Agent can be used in various teams from human resources to marketing, the company added.
Agents or agentic AI have become buzzwords in the technology industry, underscoring how companies see how these digital assistants automating more mundane tasks. Companies such as Microsoft with Co-Pilot and Anthropic’s Claude are products focused on the enterprise customer.
The move is a step beyond what DeepL, which is valued at $2 billion, has focused on since it was founded in 2017. It potentially pits the company against major AI players like Anthropic, OpenAI and Microsoft, which are targeting enterprise customers.
DeepL CEO Jarek Kutylowski told CNBC on Wednesday that the company’s agent was a natural extension of its translation product.
“We found out that the technology is as capable of helping you whenever you’re doing research or whatever you’re doing,” Kutylowski said.
“All of those tedious tasks in your office when you have to switch between different systems and take some data from one system, put it into another one, AI, and those autonomous agents, and the DeepL Agent in particular, can help solve so much better.”
DeepL’s translation product is based on its self-developed large language models. Kutylowski said DeepL Agent is based on its own models, as well as on those available “externally” from other providers.
While there are a large number of companies advertising AI agents, the market is still in a very early stage. Overall investor interest in AI companies is meanwhile still high. Amazon-backed Anthropic on Tuesday announced a funding round that put the firm at a $183-billion post-money valuation.
Technology listings appear to be gathering steam, with both fintech firm Klarna and crypto exchange Gemini this week unveiling details of their upcoming initial public offerings.
Against this backdrop, CNBC asked Kutylowski if DeepL was considering an IPO, to which he responded: “That’s not a short term plan that we would be considering right now.”
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment11 months agoHere are the best electric bikes you can buy at every price level in October 2024