From some crypto advocates, I have heard this argument as well as a related one: that these experienced investors know what they’re getting into, and that they’re not asking for protection because they believe they don’t need it. Given all of that, the argument goes, why should anyone bring regulation into a space that’s not asking for it?
Let’s focus on crypto-asset users, who are a very different group than just a few years ago. The Federal Reserve’s most recent Survey of Household Economic Decisionmaking found that 12 percent of adults used or held cryptocurrency in the past year, and more than 90 percent of these adults held them for investment purposes rather than payments.