HOUSE OVERSIGHT 029964 imagine the first congressional hearings on Bitcoin being a prelude to a federal crackdown on the decentralized financial network. But that's not what happened. Instead, the hearings were lovefests. All three Obama administration officials who testified this week stressed that Bitcoin has legitimate uses and argued that no new regulations were needed to police illicit uses of the network. Most of the other witnesses echoed those sentiments. That wasn't a coincidence. The cordial atmosphere of this week's hearings was the culmination of months of careful diplomacy by Bitcoin advocates. Since the spring, leaders of the Bitcoin community and sympathetic policy advocates have been engaging with federal regulators, lawmakers and other influential figures inside the beltway. The result: a near-unanimous consensus that the federal government needs to be careful to avoid hampering the growth of the world's first completely decentralized payment network. A tough crowd On the morning of June 13, several dozen well-dressed Washingtonians filed into the Carlucci Auditorium at the stately headquarters of the United States Institute of Peace. For many of the government officials in the room, this would be their first opportunity to meet senior figures in the Bitcoin community in the flesh. Panelists included lead Bitcoin developer Gavin Andressen and Patrick Murck, general counsel of the Bitcoin Foundation. The way the event was framed didn't augur well for Bitcoin. One of the conference's two sponsors (along with Thompson Reuters) was the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. A major theme of the second panel was the use of bitcoins to purchase child pornography. "Child pornography is like Bitcoin in some ways," said Andrew Oosterbaan, who prosecutes child pornography cases for the Justice Department. "It has intrinsic value to people who want it. The more valuable child pornography is the new child pornography. W