Re: balance sheets: If you have NONE, as is the case with crypto then, well, that is the point LaGarde was making. Even if a balance sheet looks terrible, you have something to go on. You can assess the risk. With crypto, there is no way of doing that. It doesn’t even have the virtue of gambling where you can evaluate the odds.

“Bitcoin was born out of the 2008 financial crisis.” This is patently false. Bitcoin is a direct descendant of e-Cash among others. That “Satoshi” put Lehman’s bankruptcy date in the genesis block was, well, a very long dated post-facto act. That is, unless you believe “Satoshi” had conceived, designed and written all that code long before and just waited for this event. That he was a libertarian ideologue is, however, very probable. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Hedge. Again, if you were in the hotbed of the markets for as long as me, this has been around for a long time. You could even go back to the unholy quad of the “Austrians”. See this: https://medium.com/@jsadove/the-economic-ideology-of-crypto-and-ddlts-e8f5b476996d

“(KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) following the attacks on 9/11”

Neither of these are true. Even if you haven’t worked in finance and tech as long as I have, any idiot can learn the facts by using the “ducts and tubes”:

https://www.fincen.gov/history-anti-money-laundering-laws

“KYC regulations originated from years of unchecked financial crimes. The initial guidelines were drafted in 1970 when the U.S. passed the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) to prevent money laundering. Notable additions came years later, after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and 2008 global financial crisis.”

https://www.dowjones.com/professional/risk/glossary/know-your-customer/#:~:text=KYC%20regulations%20originated%20from%20years,and%202008%20global%20financial%20crisis.

You know a cult by judging its relationship to truth.