Over the past several decades, Congress has dithered and failed to pass comprehensive legislation protecting Americans’ digital assets – including our private secrets, such as our reproductive decisions – even as two parties have called for upending American digital standards. The Senate only recently learned that the most popular apps – from Facebook to YouTube – survive on advertising dollars. Some members of Congress – I’m looking at you, Chuck Schumer – still use flip phones. This is likely why this is not a crypto convention, even though anti-regulatory forces abound from Bernie Sanders’ right to Donald Trump’s left.

“It’s a very volatile market,” says U.S. Sen. Rand Paul. “I think most people who invest in it know that.” The Kentucky Republican, pessimistic on government regulation, is one of the few U.S. lawmakers truly in the crypto business.

“I’m always fascinated by certain things that haven’t happened there yet and could. I think one day there could be a role for stablecoins – where there is real support for the coin – to perhaps compete with credit cards and be another form of transaction exchange,” adds Paul. “The government doesn’t do a very good job of regulating; this usually makes things worse.

While some lawmakers are all about crypto, others are dubious.

“Crypto fortunes are just smoke and mirrors. Built on a lot of corruption and insider trading,” said U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts). “We have needed regulation for a very long time, but Congress has been frozen in action.”

For Warren, what is needed is “comprehensive legislation that is not written by the authorities themselves. It is important that regulators have the tools they need to prevent not only this type of problem, the one that just happened in FTX, but also other types of fraud and deception.

For US Senator Cory Booker (Democrat of New Jersey), the question is one of whites and blacks. “Crypto is a field where black people are overrepresented, people without a college degree are overrepresented,” Booker says. The Democrat approaches the issue from a consumer perspective, as does Lummis. But New Jersey is not Wyoming. But ultimately, location doesn’t matter. Anyone, anywhere can invest in crypto, although anyone, anywhere can lose everything in crypto. This is impossible with American banks, which is why these legislators require a minimum.

“We need a foundation,” Lummis says. “There has to be a floor, and then, over time, if things become too regulated and we sacrifice innovation because of that, we can cross that bridge when we get there.”