Few people think of the alternate course history could have taken, which was for government authorities to conclude that Bitcoin was simply a tool of criminals. They would have attacked Bitcoin, its developers, and users with a single-minded vengeance. Today, Bitcoin would be a small corner of the computing world, with little hope of mainstream adoption for many decades. The value that the Bitcoin Foundation provided in setting Bitcoin on the right course has gone unsung, and that’s a shame.

But luckily for all of us, early in the life of the foundation Patrick Murck went around to key U.S. regulators to explain what Bitcoin is and to show that there is a serious community of investors, businesspeople, and technologists in the space. That set the tone for public policy in the U.S. today, which summarizes as “getting the benefits of Bitcoin while mitigating the risks.” Governments around the world make their own decisions, of course, but they do so in light of others’ approaches.

Patrick wasn’t Bitcoin’s only policy advocate, but he was one of the very first, and if nobody had been singing the praises of Bitcoin and defending its reputation, the media and political world would have filled the void with attacks on this alien protocol. The Bitcoin community would face far more and far greater legal, regulatory, and reputational battles than it does.

We continue to pave a smoother path for adoption. First in the U.S. and now in Europe, we are explaining and demystifying Bitcoin to key figures. Since hiring our U.S. lobbyists, we’ve had dozens of meetings with U.S. congressional staff, chiefly around the financial services committees. I can attest as a former counsel to committees in both the House and Senate that they know when their interlocutors are sophisticated and experienced, and they know when visitors to their offices are not.

Our work is paying dividends. Next week, we brief the House Republican Conference in a “staff huddle” that we sought. (We are seeking a similar opportunity with Democratic groups.) Though we are working to prevent the need, we have a bipartisan team in the U.S. with knowledge of Bitcoin and the capability to go direct to members of Congress and fight off legislative and regulatory attacks on Bitcoin.

Our first meetings in Europe earlier this month were with a variety of relevant actors. We are generating interest and support across the political and ideological spectrum, and also developing intelligence that is unavailable to less sophisticated actors.

The direction of our public policy work was set by the risk management study I published earlier this year, entitled: “Removing Impediments to Bitcoin’s Success.” Based on interviews with the Bitcoin Foundation’s leadership at the time, it found that the top threat to Bitcoin was: “No explicit outlawing, but banks decide any Bitcoin activity is too risky to deal with and they close accounts of users.”

If banks won’t serve Bitcoin companies or provide Bitcoin services themselves, this will slow essential consumer adoption. I regularly talk about “risk aversion in financial services” as our top issue.

That risk aversion is a product of the complex regulatory environment around financial services and the harsh nature of regulatory regimes. If you’re a bank and you’re on the wrong side of regulators, you’re out of business. As yet, Bitcoin is still a fairly small market, so Bitcoin is high-risk, low-reward for financial services firms.

It is unrealistic to revamp the regulatory super-structure and ease its menace for financial services providers, so our approach has been to make Bitcoin acceptable to regulators. To lower perceived risk, we argue that Bitcoin should be integrated into existing financial services regulation, and we point out the progress in states like Texas and Kansas (along with what’s pending in North Carolina), and in federal agencies like FinCEN, the IRS, and FEC. Each effort is imperfect, of course, but they are integrating Bitcoin into their existing regulatory regimes. This further validates the existence of Bitcoin and lowers the risk of adoption for the financial services industry.

The major exception to this trend is in New York, where the Department of Financial Services has proposed the sprawling “BitLicense” regime. This is an important challenge because it will determine whether regulators in major financial centers go with integration of Bitcoin or decide to create all-new regulation that puts Bitcoin into an uncertain regulatory ghetto.

We have taken the position that well-done regulation is good for the Bitcoin ecosystem, and we will use all the tools in our regulatory-process toolbox to drive the NYDFS toward better regulation. It is fairly clear that Superintendent Lawsky “gets” Bitcoin and wants to make New York a welcoming jurisdiction. Here’s hoping that he succeeds. Comments have closed on the initial “BitLicense” draft, but the debate has only just begun.

A great deal must be left unsaid in an update like this. We won’t publicize individual meetings or their content, for example, because doing so would undermine trust with people we are trying to learn from and influence. That’s offensive to acolytes of radical transparency, which I certainly understand. My role and goal at the Bitcoin Foundation, of course, is to produce success for Bitcoin, not to win arguments about government transparency or political philosophy.

I have worked to make sure there is coherence to our public policy work. There is a lot I’d like the Bitcoin community to understand about it. (We didn’t quite get there on Reddit the other day!) Mostly, I’d like the Bitcoin community’s continuing support for our efforts in the policy world to see Bitcoin through to success.