What Was Discussed at the Congressional Staff Merge Briefing

Today I had the privilege to attend a Congressional Staffer briefing on the Merge. This briefing was hosted by the Congressional Blockchain Congress and was presented by ConsenSys. The two main presenters for this briefing were the head of Consensys legal department and a key figure in the move from PoW to PoS for the Ethereum Chain Ben Edgington.

​

During the briefing, we learned how blocks will now have a set schedule in Ethereum and the various legal challenges that this type of movement could run into. With this large change comes the difficulties that will have to be addressed. The biggest of those is going to be tax policy due to how the U.S> government currently handles staking rewards and the way that they will be taxed.

​

The briefing and resulting questions I was extremely impressed by. Various people were able to ask incredibly detailed questions and things like the sanctioning of Tornado Cash were also talked about and how current U.S. law fails to address both the blockchain industry but also how something like Tornado Cash could be sanctioned. It opened my eyes as someone who is on The Hill about things that should be targeted by Congress to try and quickly resolve. With the questions asked I am more optimistic than behold hand that some sort of agreement might be possible before the end of the year!