Welcome to our institutional publication, Crypto Long & Short. This week:
- Tricia Gallagher on how the repair for damaged digital identification techniques will should be state-led and user-controlled.
- High headlines establishments ought to take note of by Francisco Rodrigues.
- Crypto TCG gacha volumes hit all-time excessive as CARDS token surges 52% in Chart of the Week.
Thanks for becoming a member of us!
-Alexandra Levis
You are studying Crypto Long & Short, our weekly publication that includes insights, information and evaluation for the skilled investor. Join right here to get it in your inbox each Wednesday.
Knowledgeable Insights
Fighting fraud within the digital age: why state-led identification is the long run
By Tricia Gallagher, founder and principal, Treasury Options Data Tech (TSIT)
The USA has misplaced an estimated $5 trillion to fraud and improper funds throughout authorities applications.
That quantity ought to cease us in our tracks.
But most coverage responses nonetheless give attention to detection, restoration and enforcement. They miss the underlying situation. Fraud at this scale shouldn’t be a compliance failure — it’s an infrastructure failure and at its middle is identification. Addressing it requires a shift away from band-aid options towards a re-architecture of our digital identification framework.
There’s a rising motion round the concept identification — and management over entry to non-public knowledge — belongs to the person, to not banks, expertise platforms and even the federal government. Even inside the monetary system, the place knowledge use is extra tightly regulated, people usually lack significant visibility or management. Information sharing operates via broad, one-time consent frameworks that allow ongoing entry and reuse of economic knowledge with restricted transparency. Extra importantly, when shoppers can’t actively direct how their knowledge is shared and used, they’re restricted of their capability to entry new and tailor-made monetary providers — constraining innovation, decreasing competitors and slowing financial development.
This dynamic is much more pronounced within the expertise sector, the place private knowledge is routinely collected, aggregated and monetized at scale. Throughout each domains, people have restricted consciousness of who has entry to their knowledge and the way it’s used.
At its core, this mannequin requires people to give up management of their identification and private knowledge to take part. These techniques will not be solely inefficient, they increase the floor space for misuse and safety breaches. Extra essentially, they erode particular person company and undermine the very notion of inalienable rights within the digital age.
Two main coverage debates in Washington mirror this stress: one focuses on decreasing fraud and improper funds; the opposite facilities on management of shopper monetary knowledge. They’re handled as separate points, however in actuality mirror the identical structural hole.
Policymakers are responding, however largely inside the constraints of the present system. Congressional efforts to replace the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act give attention to shopper knowledge management via opt-in and opt-out regimes. On the similar time, the Trump Administration has elevated fraud prevention via expanded oversight and elevated knowledge sharing throughout companies. Since January 2025, greater than a dozen federal initiatives — together with an interagency fraud process power — have been launched.
On one aspect, policymakers are pursuing incremental privateness enhancements. On the opposite, they’re increasing entry to delicate authorities knowledge to fight fraud. The result’s continued reliance on centralized knowledge swimming pools, mixed with restricted particular person management over how personally identifiable data (PII) is accessed and used. These architectures improve publicity, create engaging targets for unhealthy actors and stay troublesome to safe at scale.
The core problem shouldn’t be merely knowledge safety. It’s find out how to allow trusted verification and privateness whereas preserving particular person management over entry to non-public knowledge. With out that management, people are required to relinquish how their knowledge is accessed and used, undermining a core inalienable proper within the digital economic system. That is the place states have a essential function to play.
States have lengthy served as the first issuers of identification via start information, driver’s licenses and different foundational credentials. This positions them to guide the subsequent part of digital identification infrastructure. The way forward for digital identification would require states to develop into the anchor of belief — not by increasing knowledge assortment, however by re-architecting how that belief is expressed: shifting from centralized knowledge silos to privacy-preserving, user-controlled credentials.
Utah offers a transparent instance. Via laws taking impact in Could 2026, the state has launched a Digital Identification Invoice of Rights that locations people on the middle of how their identification is used and shared. It establishes clear ideas to allow person management, knowledge minimization, restricted surveillance and verification primarily based solely on what is critical. At its core is a straightforward actuality: belief in monetary techniques requires authoritative identification. Entry to public funds and providers is determined by verified eligibility, and states already fulfill this function.
The aim is to not take away the state, however to modernize how belief is expressed. By shifting to privacy-preserving, user-controlled credentials, states can scale back fraud, enhance transparency and strengthen accountability.
As federal debates proceed to give attention to managing knowledge inside legacy techniques, states have a possibility to guide in a essentially totally different course — one which reduces reliance on centralized knowledge and restores particular person management over identification and private data. The way forward for digital finance is not going to be outlined by velocity alone, however by whether or not techniques uphold each belief and rights.
Identification is the bridge between the 2.
Headlines of the Week
By Francisco Rodrigues
This week delivered a mix of great developments throughout geopolitics, world regulation, and decentralized finance.
Stablecoins had been a key focus globally, with the Federal Deposit Insurance coverage Corp. formally proposing its strategy to U.S. federal guidelines and a bunch led by HSBC and Normal Chartered receiving Hong Kong’s first stablecoin licenses.
In the meantime, crypto entered geopolitical tensions as Iran explored amassing transit charges in cryptocurrency for oil tankers passing via the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait has since been blockaded by the U.S. navy.
Chart of the Week
Crypto TCG gacha volumes hit all-time excessive as CARDS token surges 52%
The crypto Buying and selling Card Recreation (TCG) gacha market — the place gamers spend crypto to open randomised digital card packs — hit a file $36 million+ in weekly quantity on April thirteenth, 2026, persevering with the uptrend put up the range-bound transfer in February. CARDS/USD, the biggest tokenised buying and selling card index, seems to be responding, surging 52% within the final 24 hours as on-chain card amassing sentiment recovers.
