The Joint Economic Committee of the Congress has submitted it’s 2018 Joint Economic Report. For the first time, the report includes a chapter on cryptocurrencies [PDF] that we are pleased to see is hopeful and positive about the effect these technologies could have on the U.S. economy:
The buzz surrounding digital currencies resembles the internet excitement in the late 1990s when people recognized technology companies could change the world. Many internet companies launched and their valuations took off in short order. Many failed, but a few succeeded spectacularly and challenged the conventional ways of doing business. For example, people considered GeoCities the “home page” for individuals and Yahoo bought the company for $3.57 billion in 1999.406 GeoCities had characteristics similar to Facebook today (or MySpace in the early 2000s), but it never came close to Facebook’s reach and remained unprofitable. A company that did eventually succeed is an online book retailer called Amazon.com, but along the way its price gyrated with stock splits and recessions.
We were also happy to see Coin Center’s work cited several times throughout the report. Our director of research Peter Van Valkenburgh was quoted directly on money transmission licensing and securities regulations for ICOs, which have been major issues for us over the last few years.