Not enough people are talking about the implications of the new RESTRICT act on the government's ability to severely crack down on #Bitcoin.

Some examples of how this language could potentially directly affect the Bitcoin industry below 👇 www.documentcloud.org/documents/23697944-restrict-act-final-text… twitter.com/i/web/status/1639607817932795907

First, some definitions so we know the breadth and scope of what is being considered in this bill:

CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE is defined in accordance with the Patriot Act (🚩)

www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-107publ56/pdf/PLAW-107publ56.pdf

INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY PRODUCTS OR SERVICES:

The definition provided below seemingly would encompass the #bitcoin protocol itself, as well as most products and services built on top of or adjacent to the protocol. This includes nodes, miners, etc.

HOLDING:

The definition of holding, while seemingly aimed at legal holdings in a corporate entity, is defined in a basically unlimited fashion. It does not seem far fetched that a malign regulator could try to interpret paragraph (viii) below to include holding tokens:

TRANSACTION:

The definition of transaction includes "software updates" and "provision of data hosting services." If interpreted in a particular way, could this include updating a #bitcoin node or running a bitcoin data center?

ICTS COVERED HOLDING ENTITY:

Could this act be used as justification to ban American companies from doing business with #bitcoin mining infrastructure providers (ASIC manufacturers)?

Or could it rope American miners into this classification because of installed hardware?

Now that definitions are out of the way, let's look at what the scope of the bill covers:

The way this reads, with its vast language ("any") in conjunction with the broad definitions above, it seems this could be used for a wide array of enforcement actions (a la Patriot Act):

These broad actions can be taken against an ICTS that poses a risk to infrastructure or the "digital economy."

Could this be used as a pretext to 6102 attack #bitcoin?

"Bitcoin is undermining the dollar and threatening the resilience of the US economy."

What about mining?

And here's the catch-all that makes the RESTRICT Act truly problematic for #bitcoin:

"National Security" is directly linked to American global economic primacy: Look no further than the 2022 National Security Strategy, and ask yourself, how might this be used against Bitcoin?

Finally, this bill delegates to the president, seemingly at his or her sole discretion, the ability to "compel divestment of, or otherwise mitigate the risk associated with" any covered holdings subject to US jurisdiction with respect to the following:

There is more in the bill, but in sum, as it is currently written, I think we need to be having a serious discussion about the potential for broad government overreach akin to the Patriot Act that is baked into the RESTRICT Act.

We cannot sleep on this one.

Interesting that the final provision of this bill is to exempt any actions taken under its auspices from FOIA requests or other information sharing schemes designed to support transparency in legislation.

Hard not to construe this as an attempt to avoid all accountability: