Finance
To Boost Crypto, Break The Federal Grip On Americans’ Financial Rights
Senator Patrick Toomey (R-PA) listens while Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) speaks during a press … [+]
Despite the efforts of a few members of Congress, U.S. cryptocurrency policy remains a mess. For years, the Securities and Exchange Commission, most federal banking agencies, and many members of Congress have been outright hostile toward crypto.
But due to several new proposals, many crypto supporters are hopeful this hostility will fade. Over the last few weeks, Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), former President Donald Trump, and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., all announced proposals for the U.S. to create a bitcoin reserve.
Given the sad current state of U.S. crypto policy, however, it is doubtful these kinds of proposals would get things on track. Still, they provide a great opportunity to have a more fundamental conversation about how to improve crypto policy. To paraphrase my colleague George Selgin, there’s surely a good policy somewhere between the status quo and these reserve proposals.
And it’s vital that Congress finds it.
Crypto enables new forms of digital payments, where users can bypass traditional third-party intermediaries, such as banks and broker-dealers. In other words, it allows for person-to-person electronic transfers of digital assets, including money.
In theory, allowing people to spend money electronically in ways resembling how they’ve been spending cash shouldn’t be controversial, especially in America. Nonetheless, this feature, along with the potentially disruptive nature of crypto, has proven too much for politicians to overcome.
Some people don’t like that crypto is a competitive threat to companies in the traditional payments industry. Others don’t like that it’s a threat to the existing anti-money laundering regime. (That’s an especially big problem because the federal government has drafted traditional financial institutions to act as an extension of law enforcement.) Other critics see bypassing these systems as a threat to the U.S. dollar itself.
The specter of these threats has made it difficult to develop sound cryptocurrency policy, but there are two basic principles—principles that have been foundational to the United States—that can help Congress address these concerns.
The first one relates to the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protects Americans against warrantless searches and seizures by the government. Thanks to the Bank Secrecy Act and its many amendments, Fourth Amendment protections have been all but eliminated when it comes to Americans’ financial records. The BSA gives law enforcement warrantless access to Americans’ financial records when they use a bank or any other financial institution.
Rather than adapt to the technology, many policymakers want to force crypto to adapt to a system that was designed to work with financial intermediaries. But crypto often upends the traditional role of intermediaries, thus forcing Congress to deal with how it has used those intermediaries to end-run the Fourth Amendment.
Many members of Congress (and the financial industry) now view the Fourth Amendment as a relic, somewhere between overly burdensome and an afterthought, unapplicable to modern America. But the Fourth Amendment was never supposed to be perfect. It represents, instead, the necessarily imperfect balance between the competing interests of individuals’ financial privacy and the government’s ability to gather evidence of a crime.
Reaffirming Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights, as Congress should do, would not be a license to commit crime. It would simply mean that law enforcement must demonstrate probable cause to a judge before accessing Americans’ financial records, just as they do for other searches.
The second principle—limited government—dictates that people, not government officials, are generally the best judges of which economic transactions are in their own best interest. Yet, the federal government now dictates which methods of payments are acceptable, which special institutions may facilitate those payments, and how those institutions may operate. Some members of Congress even want cryptocurrency banned because it doesn’t fit into this government regime.
The principle of limited government also answers the critics who see crypto as a threat to the U.S. dollar. The federal government is not supposed to be the provider of Americans’ money precisely because governments tend to debase currency. The U.S. government is supposed to refrain from debasing people’s money, and to protect people’s right to use money as they see fit. The government is not supposed to control every aspect of how people use their money or even what they use for money.
Critics of crypto assume that the government’s existing monopoly on money issuance maintains the dollar standard itself, but that’s incorrect. The prevalence of the U.S. dollar grew when gold and silver were recognized as money, and it does not depend on a specific type of paper currency or digital entries. The prevalence of the U.S. dollar derives from the country’s relatively strong legal and economic systems, especially as they pertain to protecting individual property rights.
Many advocates of cryptocurrency are frustrated because the federal government has failed to uphold these limited government principles and debased the currency. Americans now have effectively one choice for money, and even the person-to-person transfer of that currency is now highly regulated and surveilled.
So, it makes sense that so many crypto proponents are cheering on these reserve proposals in the hope that they will gain wider acceptance for Bitcoin. Unfortunately, these proposals do not directly address the underlying problems that have kept U.S. crypto policy such a mess.
Cryptocurrency will remain of limited use until Congress pares back the overly invasive regulatory framework that currently governs U.S. financial markets. To do so, Congress need only reaffirm the importance of the Fourth Amendment and a limited government.
DULUTH — The Duluth Homegrown Music Festival is seeking both new operational leadership and a solution to financial filing issues that caused the organization to lose its federal tax-exempt status, which it has not held since 2022.
The organization is currently operating as a taxable nonprofit, confirmed Don Ness, the former Duluth mayor who serves as president of Homegrown’s
board of directors.
Ness and the board are working to discern whether there might be any outstanding tax liabilities in the wake of an apparent filing lapse.
“It’s a serious matter that requires diligence to do things right, and to correct past oversight, and to make sure that we are in full compliance with all tax and regulatory requirements,” Ness said. “The board is 100% committed to that course of action.”
As the Duluth Monitor first reported, Homegrown had its federal tax-exempt status revoked in 2022 after failing to make required financial reports for three years. The Monitor also reported that Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office has notified the organization it may be in violation of state law requiring the proper registration of soliciting charities.
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
“All but one of us have been on for less than a year,” Ness said of the current board members. “We’ve been committed to saying, ‘hey, we need to improve the points of accountability.’”
The organization will also require new operational leadership. Co-directors Cory Jezierski and Dereck Murphy-Williams resigned earlier this month, after leading Homegrown through four successful festivals.
“My contract ended at the end of May, and I knew a few days later that I did not want to continue in that position,” Jezierski said. “Simply put, it was the best thing for my mental health. It’s a job that requires many, many hours and a lot of work, and it can be very stressful as well.”
Amy Arntson / Duluth Media Group file photo
Murphy-Williams did not respond to an interview request for this article, nor did preceding Homegrown director Melissa LaTour. According to LaTour’s
LinkedIn profile,
she was Homegrown director from 2016 to 2022.
Jason Beckman, a recent president who is no longer serving on the board, responded to a News Tribune email but did not provide an interview availability before this article went to press.
Ness does not believe the reporting lapses were due to any ill intent. He praised Jezierski and Murphy-Williams for their success managing festival operations. “They cared deeply about the festival,” he said. “It’s amazing to see that our community continues to support this really unique and special festival.”
“Those guys run a hell of a festival,” said Scott Lunt, festival founder and a current board member. “I think they needed help with bookkeeping.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
By Jezierski’s account, issues with the festival’s tax status became apparent shortly after he became co-director. “We went to file taxes, they were rejected,” Jezierski said. “At that time we, of course, didn’t know why right away, but once we started pulling on that thread, we unraveled a whole lot of the problems that were going on.”
Jezierski said “it took a long time to try to get any sort of help” from the board, but said that by the time he and Murphy-Williams left the organization, “everything had been turned over to be reconciled” with a financial professional.
Ness, like Lunt, was deeply involved with Homegrown in its first decade but had not had an official role with the festival since then. After launching the festival in 1999 and running it on his own for several years, Lunt was “burnt out,” Ness remembered.
Derek Montgomery / Duluth Media Group file photo
After a transition period during which the festival was run in partnership with the Ripsaw newspaper, Homegrown established a nonprofit organization in 2006 with Ness as festival director. Ness subsequently stepped down when he was elected mayor in 2007.
By 2025, Ness was in his current position as executive director of the Ordean Foundation.
“I was approached by a couple of longtime music scenesters,” Ness recalled. “They said, ‘There are questions about (Homegrown’s) nonprofit status. There are questions about some governance issues. We’re concerned.’”
Ness agreed to join the board, and became president. The 2026 festival ran smoothly from an operational standpoint, but Ness found the financial reporting to be lacking.
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
“The last board meeting that we had prior to the (co-directors’) resignations was intended to be an overview of the festival that was a month before,” Ness said. “I certainly felt very uncomfortable with how little financial information we were receiving.”
Lunt also joined the board in 2025, marking his first time serving in that capacity. He said the new board has been spending significant time addressing the accounting and reporting issues.
“Every year at Homegrown time I’m like, ‘I should get more involved,’ and then I don’t,” Lunt said. “Then this board thing came up, and it was kind of sold to me as, like, four meetings a year. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s perfect.’ And now we’re meeting weekly.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
Although it’s unclear how the organization’s finances will look when the accounting and reporting issues have been fully addressed, along with any outstanding tax liabilities, both Ness and Lunt said they are confident the annual festival will continue without interruption.
“The organization will continue,” Ness said. “The festival will continue. Homegrown is in no danger in terms of its viability.” The financial documentation Ness initially received indicated budgeted revenues of about $140,000, against about $130,000 in expenses.
“Financially, I think we’re in a great spot. We have the money to hire the (financial) professionals, and we have (done so),” Lunt said. “We were hoping that we could get all this sorted out before it had to become more public.”
“We poured countless hours into this festival, and this is how it ends, with everyone talking about this,” Jezierski said. “It’s rough.”
“There’s a DIY ethos that is really at the core of Homegrown,” reflected Ness. “We’re throwing a music festival that isn’t waiting for some famous band from the East Coast to bless us with their presence. We are doing this on our own.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
That DIY spirit also means “you’re kind of passing wisdom down from person to person, and sometimes that’s imperfect.” Ness continued. “The ways that we do things evolve over time, because it’s not a buttoned-down corporate sort of thing. That can create its own set of challenges.”
“It’s self-supporting,” said Lunt about the festival. “It’s widely volunteer-run. You do need to pay a couple people, obviously, to keep track of some things, but it’s going to be strong into the future. It’s gone through its bumps before.”
While most AI in financial services remains advisory, LUMIQ has built the layer that owns the decision — autonomous, auditable AI agents making regulated calls in production at leading banks, insurers, and capital markets firms. Today, LUMIQ serves clients across India, the United States, and Southeast Asia — leading institutions across insurance, banking, and capital markets.
NEW YORK and SINGAPORE, June 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — LUMIQ, an AI-native financial services company, today announced a strategic funding round to scale auto-decisioning for financial institutions across the United States and Southeast Asia. The round was led by Bajaj Finserv, one of India’s largest and most diversified financial services groups, with participation from existing investor Info Edge Ventures.
Right now, thousands of customers are waiting for a policy to be issued, a loan to be disbursed, a claim to be adjudicated, because somewhere an FSI employee is drowning in decisions, held back by the risk of getting it wrong. Today, when e-commerce delivers the same day, banks and insurers still decide in weeks. We built LiteCone to take that burden: AI decides the routine cases, completely and accountably, so humans spend their judgment on the one case that actually needs it. This round lets us bring that to every financial institution in the markets that matter most.
Shoaib Mohammad, Co-founder and CEO, LUMIQ
From AI that assists to AI that decides
For decades, financial institutions have bought technology that made their people faster — faster data, faster scoring, faster copilots. The decision still landed on a human. LUMIQ is changing that. Through its LiteCone platform, the company deploys AI agents that read the file, apply the institution’s own guidelines, and reach the decision end to end — escalating only the cases that genuinely require human judgment. The output is not a recommendation. It is a decision, with full reasoning attached, cross-referenced to policy, and defensible under audit.
The results in production speak clearly. At a leading life insurer, LUMIQ’s LEO agent decides 75–80% of underwriting cases with zero human touch, reduced policy issuance cost by roughly 25%, and compressed turnaround from days to under eight minutes — running 24×7 with complete auditability. Across its client base spanning insurance, banking, and capital markets in India, the US, and Southeast Asia, LUMIQ now processes millions of decisions annually.
LiteCone turns a real financial-services role into a working AI agent in weeks. Every agent we deploy is consistent, explainable, compliant, and auditable by design — not as an afterthought. This capital lets us go deeper on the platform and broader across roles. And through our cloud and AI lab partnerships, institutions will increasingly find LiteCone already embedded in the platforms they run today.
Vaibhav Dobriyal, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer, LUMIQ
Consumer confidence has plunged among traditionally optimistic younger adults amid fears for their personal finances and the wider economy, figures show.
GfK’s long-running Consumer Confidence Index remained unchanged at an overall score of minus 23 in June.
However, the analyst said this was was “misleading as, beneath the surface, there are new signs that confidence is weakening”.
Neil Bellamy, consumer insights director at GfK, said: “The biggest fall this month is among those aged 16 to 29, traditionally one of the most optimistic groups.
“Here confidence has dropped 11 points over the past month to minus two, the lowest level seen for two years, driven by large falls in views on both their own personal finances and the wider economy.
“More broadly, there are now no demographic groups with a positive confidence score, including higher-income households earning £50,000 or more, who have slipped back into negative territory as of June.
“Confidence remains subdued and vulnerable to further economic or political uncertainty.”
Overall, confidence in personal finances over the coming year remained flat at minus two, four points lower than this time last year.
The measures of both personal finances and the economy over the previous 12 months were both slightly down, by two points and three points respectively, “reflecting the sense that things have been extremely tough over the last year for so many”, GfK said.
The only measure to increase was expectations for the wider economy over the next 12 months, up two points to minus 36 but still eight points below this time last year.
The major purchase index, an indicator of confidence in buying big ticket items, remained at minus 20, four points lower than June last year.
-
Sports3 minutes agoShohei Ohtani out of Dodgers’ lineup vs. Orioles for birth of his second child
-
World15 minutes agoLebanese influencer organises World Cup event amid Israel’s attack on Leban
-
News38 minutes agoAir Force One, gifted to Trump from Qatar, arrives at Joint Base Andrews
-
New York2 hours agoVideo: Fans Show Up to the Parade in Their Best Knicks-Themed Attire
-
Los Angeles, Ca2 hours agoVictims sought after man allegedly points gun at passing cars in Santa Clarita Valley
-
Detroit, MI2 hours agoBest barbershop in Metro Detroit: Finalists for this year’s Vote 4 The Best
-
San Francisco, CA3 hours agoHow to watch San Francisco Giants vs. Miami Marlins
-
Dallas, TX3 hours agoDrivers in North Texas struggle with Friday floods
