It wasn’t so long ago (earlier this month) that the US appeared to be following a path of outright hostility towards the crypto industry, seemingly keen to force out crypto-native enterprises even as several other regions around the world were opening their doors to crypto integration.
This, at times, has been seen as a belligerent attitude led by the SEC and aggressive enough for some crypto industry participants, including some influential figures, to speculate that it’s an orchestrated attempt to halt crypto development. In fact, this theory even has a name: Operation Choke Point 2.0 (a reference to a banking investigative operation from 2013 to 2017 by the US Department of Justice that was heavily criticized for allegedly bypassing due process.)
There are also, it should be noted, plenty of observers who dismiss this theory. Plus, it’s true that proponents of the idea that there’s a behind-the-scenes anti-crypto campaign tend to overlook the very real irregularities highlighted at some major crypto platforms, which, as in the case of an entity like FTX, have sometimes caused enormous damage to users.
Still though, whichever side of that debate you happen to fall on, what’s becoming clear is that this month has seen an enormous shift in the US crypto landscape, resulting in a dramatic turnaround in sentiment.
A Bleak Start to the Month
June began ominously, with the SEC suing both Binance and Coinbase (ranked, respectively, as the first and third biggest crypto exchanges in the world by average daily volumes) and creating the outward impression of a regulatory body that was on the warpath and gunning for crypto.
Perhaps at least partly as a result of these events, the price of bitcoin dropped, dipping below the $25,000 mark after an impressively bullish year to date. Moreover, the general sentiment took a hit, as it began to appear that even as other regions of the world were looking seriously at ways to integrate crypto, the US, if the attitude of the SEC was indicative of a wider plan, was willing to cut itself off from the entire industry.
BlackRock Turns The Situation
Against this backdrop, the middle of the month saw BlackRock turn the entire situation on its head, as the world’s largest asset management company filed an…
