Regulation: Fear Writes the Rules... Innovation Pays the Price
Fear moves people… it always has. Fear of pain… fear of loss… even fear of injustice.
But the most dangerous kind is the one that’s dressed up to look noble… when fear is used to “protect” people, but ends up caging them instead.
Picture this... a woman sells prints of her unique art at pop-ups. It’s raw, it’s new… people love it. She takes payments through online personal payment systems… she pays taxes, got a vendor license, and keeps everything above board. Then one day, her account gets flagged… Frozen funds. No appeal. No warning.
Why? Because she didn’t fill out a specific form that she didn’t know existed. Because she didn’t classify her art as a registered business in one little place, and someone reported her…
It’s devastating… her soul is crashed… she goes silent… stops selling, and decides to just get a “normal job” instead…
Another small business and kind creative soul snuffed out… by bureaucracy.
Consider the college programmer… he builds something powerful. A protocol that could decentralize access to vital information. Nothing shady… just maybe too free. His dad says he needs to talk to a lawyer… the lawyer says, “You might need licenses. You might be a money transmitter permit. You might fall under 12 different jurisdictions. You might get sued.”
So he stops. Doesn’t launch… shelves it… and kills the idea.
Not because it wasn’t good… but because the fear of being “non-compliant” beat the courage to build.
The Lie We’re Sold About Regulation
Some people say regulation builds trust. That more rules make something more accessible, more acceptable, more adoptable… maybe in a few cases, but that’s rarely how it plays out.
In practice, regulation doesn’t level the playing field… it builds a wall around it. It becomes a way to manage people, not empower them. A way to make honest actors prove they belong, while the corrupt bad actors already know how to work the system.
I’ve spent entire days proving I’m me… proving that I’m not doing anything illegal, not gaming the system, not laundering money. And I’m not special in that way… we’ve all done it.
You want to start a business? You’re going to need forms, proofs, and registrations. You can’t even send a wire or use crypto at scale… Better be ready for layers and layers of KYC and AML checks, re-verifications, delays, suspicious flags, instant bans with nobody to talk to about re-instatement… and it’s only getting worse.
You’re not protected. You’re presumed suspicious… until you clear enough hurdles to be granted temporary legitimacy.
And all of this? It’s just to EXIST within the current system... imagine trying to innovate beyond it.
What We Lost Along the Way
Business used to be about building value and trading it freely. Now, there’s a baseline tax on participation... regulatory overhead, friction, liability, licensing, compliance, insurance, and now the cherry on top: Know Your Customer.
KYC is one of the most invasive requirements of all. It demands that companies turn every user into a liability. Every potential community is now a risk. It’s not just about preventing crime... it’s about shifting the burden entirely onto creators, developers, and founders to become the unpaid police force of a system THEY never broke.
And who survives that kind of pressure?
Not the upstarts. Not the outcasts. Not the weirdos with a better way.
The ones who survive are the ones who already had legal teams, compliance officers, and extra capital. The big ones. The safe ones. The boring ones. They don’t innovate because they don’t have to. They just wait until the rules are too costly for anyone else to compete. It's called regulatory capture, and it's used everywhere.
Regulatory capture occurs when a regulatory agency, meant to serve the public interest, instead advances the interests of a few powerful players in the industries it regulates.
Control Is Never Just an Accident
In the 80s, there were still hundreds and hundreds of independent radio and TV stations across the US… local, niche, imperfect, and full of personality. It scared a lot of people… how do we know what they are going to broadcast? They own a channel… they bought the frequency space… built the transmission facilities and studios… and many times they proclaimed that they would “never sell out!” …
Enter the FCC’s digital signal mandate. I remember, I was there… working at one of those TV stations. The upgrade to digital transmission cost millions. Those who couldn’t afford it... lost their license.
Not because their content was bad. Not because they broke a law. But because they couldn’t pay to play.
The result? Ownership consolidated… the vast majority of them ended up selling out to a larger station group to afford it, almost all sold out to the same one.
Voices disappeared and “local news” became national propaganda on repeat.
What looked like modernization was really quiet censorship through economic force. And that same model keeps repeating, again and again... in finance, in media, in tech. The rules shift just enough to ensure only the big players stay in the game, and anyone building something new has to fight uphill the whole way.
Sure, I get it… people are afraid of scams, of criminals and dangerous people, of losing their money, of being taken advantage of...and rightly so. But instead of empowering individuals, the system responds by disempowering everyone. Instead of offering tools to protect yourself, it offers surveillance and a thumb in your back.
What if we didn’t accept that tradeoff? What if security didn’t have to mean submission?
The Cypherpunks Saw It Coming
In the ‘90s, before any of this "crypto stuff" was mainstream, a group of privacy advocates saw where things were headed. They believed that encryption should be available to everyone, not just governments. They fought for it... against the law, against the system... and eventually, they won.
They understood that privacy is more than protection. It’s freedom.
And that freedom is what allows creativity, independence, and yes... innovation.
They didn’t wait for permission. They didn’t play by the book. They built what they believed in... because they knew the future was worth defending.
Freedom Isn’t Free
If you’ve ever felt like the rules were designed to break your spirit... you’re not wrong.
If you’ve ever felt like you were being treated like a threat, just for trying to build something good... you’re not imagining it.
But you’re also not alone.
There’s a growing movement of people who still believe in freedom.
Who still believe that decentralization matters.
Who don’t want a future of blacklists, forced disclosures, and compliance that REQUIRES stagnation.
People who are tired of being told that trust has to come from a government or regulator... instead of from honesty, transparency, history, or value.
Our resistance to unnecessary control is not only valid... it’s vital.
So keep going… not just because the system is broken, but because the future still belongs to those who care enough to build it...
and most importantly…
are kind and creative enough to make sure it's worth living in.
Alright, that was all for now Rebel.
By the way… only a few know where the Rebel Speakeasy is. And now you’re one of them—grab a drink and let’s talk. We meet every Wednesday in live audio spaces on X.
Hope to see you there!
- Ani & Rick
RebelSpeakeasy.com by Ani • Rick
Find us on X @NFTrebels & @unl0c7