Christopher Giancarlo: The Unlikely Hero for Cryptocurrencies

A top-ranking official in the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) just became the unlikely hero for the cryptocurrency community after portraying Bitcoin and other altcoins in a positive light at Capitol Hill last Tuesday.

Attention from regulators has always spelled “TROUBLE” for the cryptocurrency community in the past, especially after crackdowns from various governmental bodies like the IRS and the SEC, which have crippled the cryptocurrency world in one way or another. However, Christopher Giancarlo, chairman of the CFTC won over the hearts of the masses with his optimistic statements about cryptocurrency in front of the Senate last week.

“We owe it to this new generation, to respect their interest in this new technology with a thoughtful regulatory approach,” Giancarlo emphasized. “We must crack down hard on those who abuse our young enthusiasm for Bitcoin and blockchain technology for their own personal gains.”

“I think this distributed ledger technology has enormous potential. Now how it will be realized, when it will be realized, are challenges, and those we can’t say,” he added.

Twitter Welcomes the Hero with Open Arms

Giancarlo’s bullish attitude towards digital currencies was hailed by the crypto community on Twitter. His Twitter account grew from 5,294 followers to over 45,000, almost a 10x increase in less than a week.

Neeraj Agrawal, the PR guy at the cryptocurrency advocacy group Coin Center, sent Giancarlo a warm welcome message.

Chairman Giancarlo………. welcome to crypto twitter

— Neeraj K. Agrawal (@NeerajKA) February 6, 2018

The hashtag #GiancarloForPresident even became trending for a brief moment, as netizens hailed the CFTC chairman as the ‘GOAT’, short for ‘The Greatest of All Time’.

My takeaway from this meeting is Giancarlo is the goat.

/fin

— Ledger Status (@ledgerstatus) February 6, 2018

This tweet by CoinCenter that features a video of Giancarlo uttering the now-famous quote of his has gathered almost 12,000 likes and 6,500 retweets:

CFTC Chairman Giancarlo: “We owe it this new generation to respect their enthusiasm about virtual currencies with a thoughtful and balanced response, not a dismissive one.” pic.twitter.com/0v4M5gExfc

— Coin Center (@coincenter) February 6, 2018

In fact, the Twitter community’s love for this man grew so strong that he was meme-ified – turned into memes for ‘long-term preservation and educational purposes’.

On one of those memes, Giancarlo’s face was photoshopped onto the face of Legolas from Lord of The Rings as he fought side by side with Bitcoin as an unlikely ally.

Source: FinanceMagnates

Another widely shared meme, which also happens to be the featured image for our article on the SEC hearing, shows Giancarlo uttering one of the most familiar words in the crypto space – HODL.

During his speech at the hearing, Giancarlo even made an effort to explain the concept of “HODL-ing” to the Senate.

” If you go on to the Twitter universe, you will see the phrase ‘H-O-D-L,’ meaning hold on for dear life, meaning they buy it and hold it.”

This positive meme-ing of Giancarlo is a change for the Twitter and Reddit community, which are used to making negative memes about cryptocurrency skeptics like J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon.

“There’s also a lot of ‘meme-ing’ people who support a coin you don’t like,” said Agrawal. “This seems to be the first instance of someone from outside the crypto community who has received an overwhelming support from the community.”