I only finished watching the hearings yesterday and they turned out much better than I thought.
Lawsky was much more level headed than some of the public comments he's made. I think there's a good possibility he acts much like the rest of us when we dug into the technology for the first time. Amazed. He mentioned once during the testimony about how his head was exploding. That is not a comment made by someone not impressed b by something.
public statements like this one?
"We're always going to choose to squelch money launderers...even if it prevents 1,000 flowers from blooming"
come on there're tons of documentations out there they/he could have read before the hearings, the representatives of New York Department of Financial Services have shown an extreme lack of knowledge on the matter they are supposing to regulate.
It would have taken 30min to read something like the Brito and Castillo paper ("BITCOIN A primer for Policymakers")
before the hearings. I didn't expect they read the Satoshi paper, though is quite accessible, but at least something easier to let them grasp the basics was mandatory imho.
