The Hail Mary filing, filed by an appointee of the outgoing presidential administration of Joe Biden, seeks to preserve cryptocurrencies. wallet Developers are responsible for any fraud or false transactions affecting users - but the move will almost certainly be reversed once Donald Trump takes office later this month.

Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced a new proposal Interpretive rule This would give it the authority to regulate digital asset wallets as financial institutions offering electronic funds transfers. Doing so would allow the office to retain wallet providers such as metamask and Phantom Responsible for fraudulent, erroneous or “unauthorized” transactions.

The agency, which was created to protect consumers in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, says these amendments are legally permitted, but is opening the proposed rule to two months of public comment as a courtesy.

“When people pay for their household expenses using new forms of digital payments, they must be confident that their transactions are not tainted by harmful monitoring or errors,” Rohit Chopra, the office’s director, said today in a statement.

The response to the proposed rule by cryptocurrency policy leaders was swift and decisive.

“You were hacked because... you thought a model in Malaysia needed $5,000 to fly out to see you? “Don't worry your wallet might have to cover it,” Bill Hughes, a senior consultant at MetaMask creator Consensys, quipped in mail To X on Friday. (Disclosure: ConsenSys is one of 22 investors in... Decryption.)

“This is like holding the hammer manufacturer (who in many cases provides the hammers for free) liable for misuse of the hammer,” says Joey Krug, a partner at Peter Thiel's technology-focused Founders Fund. to publish In response.

Many in the cryptocurrency space saw the move, while disturbing, as unsurprising — given the deep ties between the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Elizabeth Warren, perhaps the most hated figure in the industry. The villain.

Warren herself proposed creating the office in 2007, while she was still a professor at Harvard. Rohit Chopra, the agency's current director, is a longtime ally of Warren and was nominated for the position by Joe Biden in 2020.

If crypto leaders were frustrated about the rule proposed on Friday, they didn't seem too concerned about its potential harm. In 2020, the US Supreme Court to rule The President may dismiss the Director of the Bureau without cause.

Looking at the incoming Trump administration intensely Locating pro-encryption- And the Republicans simmered for a long time Anger In the mere existence of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, it seems likely that Chopra, and his efforts to rein in cryptocurrency wallet providers, are living on borrowed time.