Non-partisan · all-volunteer
About the Cryptoskeptics Forum
We examine how the crypto industry is structured and the risks it poses to competition, financial stability, and the protection of investors and consumers.
Mission Statement
To study the crypto industry and provide to policymakers and the public relevant data, analysis, and commentary from a skeptical perspective.
Our History
We are a group of volunteers, with backgrounds in law, economics, and finance, who came together in late 2024 to learn more about the crypto industry. We have reviewed extensive background materials and consulted with experts who hold a variety of viewpoints about the crypto industry.
Our efforts at first focused on the then-pending GENIUS Act, which Congress approved in July 2025. We then turned our attention to the so-called CLARITY Act, which, in September 2026, failed to move forward to a final vote in the Senate. Most recently, we have studied the structure of the crypto industry and analyzed the potential implications of the industry's structure and international scope.
We hope our Report will draw attention to the dangerously high levels of concentration in important segments of the crypto industry, as well as the dominant positions held by foreign crypto firms, which are largely shielded from U.S. oversight. We also hope our Report will be helpful to national, state, and foreign governments as they consider appropriate regulatory responses to the expanding risks created by the crypto industry.
This website also connects to our Substack, which is operated by a team member, Don Resnikoff, and provides summaries and links for various materials that our readers may find to be informative and useful.
The team
The Forum's members. Our market-structure study was compiled by a research fellow.
Henry Balikov
Henry Balikov has been a business consultant for several decades. His focus has been on helping organizations make the business case for energy efficiency and environmental excellence. He has management systems auditing credentials for energy and the environment. His practice now focuses on the elements of sustainability and climate resilience. Recently he has analyzed the energy and environmental implications of America's data center buildout.
Albert (“Bert”) Foer
Bert Foer has experience as a Chairman and CEO of a mid-sized chain of retail jewelry stores; a private lawyer; a Senior Executive of the Federal Trade Commission; and founder and former president of the American Antitrust Institute, where he is a Senior Fellow. He represented the FTC as a Commissioner on the National Commission on Electronic Fund Transfers in the 1970s. His earliest consideration of crypto was in his “Culture, Economics, and Antitrust: The Example of Trust,” The Antitrust Bulletin 65, 81 (2018).
Barbara Opper
Barbara Opper is a financial markets economist with substantial experience analyzing banking, capital markets, and finance at the World Bank and the Federal Reserve Board. She authored the Federal Reserve Bulletin's annual articles on Insured Commercial Bank Income from 1977 to 1983. She was an officer on the board of directors of Bank Fund Federal Credit Union. Since retiring from those positions, she has advised ministries of finance in many middle-income countries on sustainable management of their sovereign debt.
Don Allen Resnikoff
Don Allen Resnikoff is a retired antitrust attorney who worked in the federal and D.C. governments. He oversees the Cryptoskeptics Forum’s Substack,
substack.com/@cryptoskeptic101.
Arthur E. Wilmarth, Jr.
Arthur E. Wilmarth, Jr. is a Professor Emeritus of Law at George Washington University Law School. He was a member of GW Law's faculty from 1986 to 2020 and was Executive Director of GW Law's Center for Law, Economics, and Finance from 2011 to 2014. In 2010, he served as a consultant to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the body established by Congress to report on the causes of the global financial crisis of 2007 to 2009. He has written several articles on stablecoins and the crypto industry, including “The OCC's Crypto Trust Bank Charters Violate Federal Laws, Undermine the OCC's Credibility, and Create Unacceptable Systemic Dangers,” Florida State University Business Review (forthcoming); “The Looming Threat of Uninsured Nonbank Stablecoins,” 50 Delaware Journal of Corporate Law 3 (2025); and “We Must Protect Investors and Our Banking System from the Crypto Industry,” 101 Washington University Law Review 235 (2023).
Reports
2026 · current report
The Crypto Industry's Concentrated and Dangerous Market Structure
A functional map of how the crypto industry is organized competitively: who the players are in each of six segments, how concentrated each segment is (measured by the standard antitrust metric, HHI), and where single firms combine functions that create conflicts of interest. A Preface sets out why this structure is anticompetitive and hazardous, and what Congress should do.
Ongoing
Commentary and analysis on the Forum Substack
Shorter pieces on crypto market structure, regulation, and the risks the industry poses, published as they are written.
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