Pretty serious suspicions are being raised regarding the direction the US financial system (and associated tech companies) are taking, this time by the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB).

This government agency’s head Rohit Chopra went as far as to tell an event, dubbed, Making America’s Payment System Work for a Digital Century – that the situation is “lurching toward” a surveillance model that’s in place in China.

This could be the outcome unless new regulation is introduced that would prevent the ever-smaller number of financial firms (with an ever-large piece of the pie) and tech companies in the business of payments, warned Chopra.

The root of the CFPB chief’s concern, the way he presented it, is the growing collection of people’s personal financial data, and how to reduce that trend.

Chopra’s idea is to introduce new rules that would regulate the way payment services report about the way they use personal data, and that concerns “private currencies” as well – digital currencies among them.

According to Chopra, this is necessary because apparently now is the point at which these private companies have their hands on so much data, that their “power over Americans’ financial decisions” has become “unprecedented.”

  • ???@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    9 months ago

    This needs to be handled carefully. Yes, crypto needs to be protected from banks as much as geocurrencies, but this could backfire if malicious parties try to alter the outcome in their own favor.

    I’m not an investor when it comes to cryptocurrency, IMO crypto is worthless and has too high a chance of staying that way. The point behind crypto is an escape route if geocurrencies suddenly end up as digital geocurrencies, which WILL be controlled in dystopian ways. That being said, setting aside $20 or so a week, or a month, or even just making a one-time $100 conversion, plus purchase cold-storage for a cryptocurrency, seems wiser than putting all your eggs in geocurrencies. Just be VERY wary of what you’re doing, and do not long-term store cryptocurrency with or use proprietary cryptocurrency owned by a corporation. The whole point of it is to have an alternative that you control, not to just keep jumping ship and starting over every time some bastard gets greedy.