One of the surest fire ways for a government to look like it's doing something is to commission a report. President Joe Biden's hotly anticipated executive order on cryptocurrency released last week was chock full of such time-buying busywork for basically every federal agency. Everyone from the Department of the Treasury to the Environmental Protection Agency has been tasked with a slew of reports, commissions, and frameworks to study digital assets and how they affect established government authorities.
The resulting EO was greeted by a sigh a relief from the cryptocurrency industry, which had (unnecessarily) feared it portended harsh crackdowns from the feds. After weeks of doomsaying, the Bitcoin price jumped up once everyone had the chance to review the text.
