I think Gary Gensler, the SEC and various politicians (e.g. Liz Warren. Brad Sherman and Janet Yellen) are trying to go down hard on crypto to deflect away from the FTX debacle, not to mention compensate for failing to protect US investors from that dodgy exchange.

Nonetheless, BlackRock's application for a Bitcoin Spot ETF (let alone requests from other TradFi players) leaves the crypto haters with little choice but to accept that it's here to stay.