on the crypto
Although the STABLE Act, proposed on December 2 by US representatives Rashida Tlaib, Jesús "Chuy" García and Stephen Lynch, has been interpreted by its supporters as protecting low-income communities, many women from marginalized communities fear that this it could actually make their situation worse.
STABLE Act: possible socio-economic repercussions
Several women of color in the tech industry, including Maker Foundation board member Tonya Evans, tweeted a plea to reconsider this bill.
Olayinka Odeniran, president of the Black Women Blockchain Council, said her group of seven council members joined dozens of other professionals in signing a letter to the Biden presidential administration asking minority industry leaders to help draft such blockchain regulations.
“I'm from the financial sector, so I know that when a policy is in the early stages of creation, they ask for community input. The political potential they are creating has no input from the community, ”Odeniran said in an interview.
“This will limit the amount of stablecoins that people in my community can use to board in space. And it will limit companies that are interested in using them to serve disadvantaged minorities or sub-banks ”.
What the STABLE Act states
Taking a step back, the STABLE Act would require issuers of stablecoins to secure banking licenses and regulatory approval before circulating stablecoins. In short, projects like the Maker Foundation would need to obtain a US banking license to lead the development of the MakerDAO ecosystem based on Ethereum, a protocol created to issue a stablecoin called 'dai'.
Dai is especially popular among Latin American communities for remittances and among students or young developers who are not rich enough to be considered accredited investors. People earning more than $ 200.000 annually under the STABLE Act would generally retain access to a wider spectrum of crypto assets.
Authorized companies that prioritize such customers may still issue stablecoins. Coinbase, for example, issued the USDC stablecoin via the Center consortium with Circle Financial, a team that could likely afford to apply for a banking license.
But not everyone agrees with the claim that this somehow protects minorities and low-income people from financial bullying. The STABLE Act could rather incentivize Americans to choose cryptocurrency, rather than simply exporting this tool for "freedom" to developing countries.
Bitcoin miner
In this context, the STABLE Act also affects bitcoin's underlying infrastructure, where network contributors are not inherently financial service providers. So a wide range of cryptocurrency users suddenly become legal targets. It remains to be seen how this bill would impact the variety of crypto users beyond blockchain network operators, from hobbyist node operators to international activists.
