According to @danheld, he posted that Bitcoin is a ponzi vaporware scheme used by money launderers and criminals, destroys the environment, and that he has returned to fiat because it is fully trusted and controlled by banks and government. Source: https://twitter.com/danheld/status/1967292126271791597 The post spotlights two core risk themes relevant to BTC trading—anti-money laundering exposure and environmental impact—which are central to global regulatory guidance for virtual assets and to policy debate on Bitcoin’s energy use. Source: https://www.fatf-gafi.org/en/publications/Virtual-Assets/Guidance-RBA-VA-VASPs.html; https://ccaf.io/cbeci FATF’s Travel Rule and related guidance require virtual asset service providers to collect and transmit originator and beneficiary information, shaping exchange compliance processes that can influence liquidity funnels and on/off-ramp conditions for BTC. Source: https://www.fatf-gafi.org/en/publications/Virtual-Assets/Guidance-RBA-VA-VASPs.html

According to @LexSokolin, the target state for finance is decentralized, automated, AI-powered and broadly accessible, but near-term resistance is concentrated in regulation, custody capital costs, AML enforcement, smart contract risk and AI governance, which directly shape venue liquidity, listings and event risk for BTC and ETH. Source: Lex Sokolin on X Custody capital rules deter banks from scaling crypto services because SEC Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 121 requires customer crypto assets to be carried on balance sheet, and President Biden vetoed a 2024 resolution to repeal it, keeping constraints in place for U.S. incumbents and limiting spot liquidity bridges. Source: SEC SAB 121; White House Veto Message May 2024 In the EU, MiCA’s stablecoin provisions entered into application in 2024 and the Crypto-Asset Service Provider regime starts from December 2024 with national transitions into 2025, steering exchange authorization, stablecoin issuance, and cross-border flows that traders must track for order book depth and euro liquidity pairs. Source: Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 MiCA; ESMA and EBA MiCA implementation updates 2024 Global AML requirements such as the FATF Travel Rule are still unevenly implemented across jurisdictions, prompting exchanges and brokers to harden withdrawals and counterparty checks, which can fragment liquidity and lengthen settlement paths for arbitrage between on-chain DeFi and centralized venues. Source: FATF Targeted Update on Virtual Assets and VASPs, 2023 and 2024 Institutional adoption of automated DeFi is slowed by oracle risk, governance concentration and smart contract exploit history, keeping higher risk premia on DeFi yields versus equivalent TradFi credit and affecting pricing of governance tokens and LP returns. Source: BIS The crypto ecosystem: key elements and risks 2023; IOSCO Policy Recommendations for Decentralised Finance 2023 AI-driven trading and advice face pending guardrails, as the SEC proposed rules on predictive data analytics for brokers and advisers and the EU adopted the AI Act, implying added model governance and disclosure for AI-enabled execution, which raises vendor risk and time-to-market for AI trading tools in crypto. Source: SEC July 2023 PDA conflicts proposal; European Parliament adoption of the AI Act 2024 Access remains a policy priority given 1.4 billion adults were unbanked in 2021, but onramps still require KYC and consumer protections, delaying universal access and keeping fiat rails as the binding constraint for retail crypto participation. Source: World Bank Global Findex 2021