Bitcoin Politics: A Year of Reflection and 2022 Predictions

A crypto recap of the year and predictions for the year ahead.

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ABOUT

This week, “Opinionated” hosts Ben Schiller, Anna Baydakova and Danny Nelson are talking about the most exciting and most annoying things that happened in crypto this year.

For Ben, the crypto hearings in the U.S. Senate – a whole bunch of them, actually! – really marked this year. Now it’s clear cryptocurrencies have some prominent opponents on Capitol Hill including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). What will the crypto politics be in 2022? Ben has some ideas.

On another regulatory note, this year the U.S. started an offensive on illegal crypto use, and also demonstrated that the seemingly decentralized and global world of blockchains is not above sanctions policies. That offensive might expand in 2022, Anna believes.

And, of course, NFTs! What would characterize this year better? Whether the hype will die down or the NFT wave will keep engulfing the world in 2022 is up in the air, but Ben, Anna and Danny have theories to share.

Also in this episode: Ben singing and Danny as the Crypto Grinch. Enjoy your holidays!

Mentioned in this episode:

This episode was produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso. Our Holiday theme music is by Hill and Dresden.

HOSTS

Dan Ilett

Dan Ilett writes on tech, money and energy. He advises business on digital strategy and technology messaging for large deals. He is founder of Erbut - an advisory company - and Greenbang - a smart technology research company.

Anna Baydakova

Anna writes about blockchain projects and regulation with a special focus on Eastern Europe and Russia. She is especially excited about stories on privacy, cybercrime, sanctions policies and censorship resistance of decentralized technologies.
She graduated from the Saint Petersburg State University and the Higher School of Economics in Russia and got her Master's degree at Columbia Journalism School in New York City.
She joined CoinDesk after years of writing for various Russian media, including the leading political outlet Novaya Gazeta.
Anna owns BTC and an NFT of sentimental value.

Danny Nelson

Danny is CoinDesk's managing editor for Data & Tokens. He formerly ran investigations for the Tufts Daily. At CoinDesk, his beats include (but are not limited to): federal policy, regulation, securities law, exchanges, the Solana ecosystem, smart money doing dumb things, dumb money doing smart things and tungsten cubes. He owns BTC, ETH and SOL tokens, as well as the LinksDAO NFT.

Benjamin Schiller

Benjamin Schiller is CoinDesk's managing editor for features and opinion. Previously, he was editor-in-chief at BREAKER Magazine and a staff writer at Fast Company. He holds some ETH, BTC and LINK.

Danny Bradbury

Danny Bradbury has been a professional writer since 1989, and has worked freelance since 1994. He covers technology for publications such as the Guardian.

EPISODES