Today I learned that Ionia left the crypto business. 😱 This is very sad because their products DashDirect and Cake Pay (the US-only Cake Wallet in-wallet gift cards, not Cake Pay Web) were some of the best adoption tools in all of crypto!

Ionia's a US-based company interfacing with both crypto and the banking system. The US is NOT a place to run a crypto company, especially if you need to deal with banks! Crypto users and projects should take care to not be US-reliant until the regulatory climate improves.

I like on crypto, and DashDirect was one of my favorite tools, so I'm very sad to see it go. But thankfully, I have plenty of other tools for spending Dash: Bitrefill, Spritz, Coinsbee, and I'm sure others.🫶 Well-integrated crypto projects will be fine.

On the other hand, Monero users in the US had fewer options outside of Cake Pay. It's not on Bitrefill, Spritz, Flexa, or many of the other tools I use to spend. The community should start scrambling to get on new platforms and build redundancy in spending tools! Also, the government hates Monero and branded it a tool for criminals (as has its own community). It's much easier to allege an always-on privacy "criminal coin" was used for laundering! 🕵️ I suspect (PURE SPECULATION!!!) that Ionia supporting Monero may have played a role.

In summary, it's a sad day for crypto adoption in the US, but we're going to be okay. Keep building, keep integrating, keep using. We'll outlast the central banks. 💪 Also remember: crypto is censorship-resistant, but you aren't (pour one out for Ross Ulbricht 😢).