When longtime crypto firm Grayscale beat the SEC before the influential D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals last week, it was the industry’s most high-profile legal victory to date. The decision joins two other recent rulings that likely will pave the way for crypto to enter mainstream finance.
This should be a moment of celebration for Web3 enthusiasts—courts are clearing longstanding legal obstacles to blockchains adding billions of users—but this moment also could prove a crossroads in determining how those users come “on chain”—and whether that process will uphold the crypto community’s long-cherished value of decentralization and its benefits, or whether that ideal will be betrayed.
