The average politician probably has little or no understanding of cryptocurrencies. Some might understand the basic idea of a blockchain and its decentralized nature but the percentage of lawmakers who know the difference between a private key and a public key, the process of setting up cold storage wallets, or how multi-sig should be implemented securely is almost certainly very, very small.
So if cryptocurrency does become regulated and businesses like exchanges are forced to implement security practices such as having most of their funds in cold storage, then who will decide what regulations should be implemented and how? Surely, it won't be the politician.
as in everything else, they'll defer to experts/advisors/lobbyists.
politicians---at least career politicians who manage to stay in office---don't have real opinions. their main job is gauging public perception and telling people what they want to hear. they may end up passing horrible regulations for cryptocurrency, especially since there isn't much of a pro-bitcoin lobby on capitol hill.
Do you think they will attempt to have one of the Core devs on board or invite someone important in the cryptocurrency community like Vitalik, coblee, or Roger Ver (eek!) to write the regulations and then just take their word for it? What will they do if they decide not to participate?
there's no way people like that would be involved in writing any laws. at most, you might see such characters in a congressional hearing answering questions from legislators, but nothing more than that. even that is a stretch.
