Congress Drew a Fine Line Between Libra and Crypto

That was a key takeaway from last week's contentious hearings in on Facebook's Libra project in Washington, D.C. While giving Facebook executive David Marcus the third degree, lawmakers took pains to distinguish between the social network's project and the broader cryptocurrency ecosystem.

Rep. Warren Davidson famously asked CoinShares chief strategy officer Meltem Demirors to explain the difference between bitcoin and "Shitcoins."

"Whatever their thoughts on Facebook and Libra, they didn't paint their thoughts of bitcoin and crypto with the same brush," said Omer Ozden, CEO of Rocktree Capital, a blockchain-focused merchant bank.

While some elected officials - cough, Brad Sherman - may have trotted out reliably anti-crypto tropes such as that Libra would be worse than 9/11, for the most part last week's hearings indicated a sort of maturity about how lawmakers are approaching the space now.

Even among the members of Congress who were "Less knowledgeable" about the space, "I was really impressed to see they knew enough to say 'we know the hearings are separate from crypto,'" Ozden said.

"We've come a long way in terms of the understanding of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies in Congress," said Perianne Boring, founder of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, which held a blockchain education event with lawmakers the day after the second hearing.

"It was encouraging to see that there are more members of Congress that are able to make that distinction between different types of products and services and applications that are available and also being able to understand they're different," she said.

The Digital Chamber's Blockchain Education Day saw representatives from just under 120 companies in the crypto space meet with staffers or elected officials from 70 different offices in both the Senate and House of Representatives.

In the days before Congress held its hearings, a draft bill began circulating which would prevent companies with more than $25 billion in assets from providing financial services, written by members of the House Financial Services Committee.

Congress seems interested in taking some action, Boring said.