Crypto News, Dec. 9: A Warm Welcome in Washington?

Six crypto CEOs have urged U.S. politicians to provide greater regulatory clarity on digital assets during a hearing in Congress. However, the entrepreneurs also warned that overly strict measures could force some of the sector's biggest firms to move overseas. Coinbase's chief financial officer Alesia Haas said: "Without tailored legislative solutions that are openly debated with public participation, the United States risks unnecessarily onerous and chilling laws and regulations."

The hearing was expected to be a combative affair — where Congress would take the opportunity to attack crypto businesses. FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was "expecting hostility and grandstanding, but instead found the discussion to be by and large productive and helpful." Some lawmakers were even full of praise for the crypto sector. Republican Congressman Pete Sessions said: "I am tremendously impressed. I see a lot of ingenuity, a lot of entrepreneurial spirit."

Not all members on the House Financial Services Committee were up to speed on how crypto works. Rep. Brad Sherman is one of them. In 2019, he said Facebook's digital currency "may do more to endanger America than 9/11." Yesterday, he said: "The No. 1 threat to cryptocurrency is crypto. Bitcoin could be displaced by Ether, which could be displaced by DOGE, which could be displaced by HamsterCoin. And there's CobraCoin, what could MongooseCoin do to CryptoCoin?"

OpenSea has rowed back on suggestions that it is planning an initial public offering after a fierce backlash from users. The NFT marketplace's new financial officer, Brian Roberts, had suggested this was the case in a Bloomberg interview. But "setting the record straight" on Twitter, he said: "There is a big gap between thinking about what an IPO might eventually look like and actively planning one. We are not planning an IPO, and if we ever did, we would look to involve the community."

Reddit has confirmed that Community Points are being rolled out to other subreddits — and interested groups can now join a waitlist. Until now, the Ethereum-based tokens have been limited to the r/Cryptocurrency and r/FortniteBR subreddits. These Community Points can be used for tipping, increasing voting power on polls, and snapping up items that are unique to each community. They also serve as a way of building a user's reputation.

Kickstarter has announced it is creating a decentralized version of its crowdfunding platform that will live on the blockchain. The company says it will be "available for collaborators, independent contributors, and even Kickstarter competitors, from all over the world to build upon, connect to, or use." Once the protocol is built, Kickstarter.com will move over. To pull off these radical plans, Kickstarter says it has chosen Celo — describing it as a "carbon negative blockchain platform."