n this commentary, attorney and educator Alice T. Crowe warns that major cryptocurrency firms are positioning themselves as banks without being subject to the same consumer protections, posing heightened risks for Black communities. She argues that crypto companies deliberately target Black consumers—through celebrity endorsements, Bitcoin ATMs in Black neighborhoods, and promises of liberation from racist banking systems—while offering little recourse against fraud, volatility, or loss, potentially deepening existing racial wealth gaps rather than closing them.
Author Archives: Alice T. Crowe
Group unity is worth a try—nothing else has worked
Alice T. Crowe, a lawyer, educator and entrepreneur that has practiced law for over 25 years in New York, argues that collective economic action—exemplified by the African Diaspora Federal Credit Union—offers a viable, overdue solution to systemic financial exclusion and predatory lending in Black communities.
Hidden in code: How tech reinvents Jim Crow barriers to housing
By Alice T. Crowe Black Americans have struggled to build wealth in America through property ownership. Owning land meant freedom. Government policies like redlining and restrictive covenants cheated Black families and communities out of wealth. Jim Crow’s color-coded paper maps were just one ruse in a trick bag of tactics used to normalize segregation and […]
A blueprint for protection: Learning from New York’s fight against deed theft
A disbarred attorney in New York, Sanford Solny, was found guilty of 13 counts of third-degree criminal possession of stolen property and three counts of first-degree scheme to defraud, while states should follow New York’s lead in protecting homeowners against deed theft by empowering prosecutors to file legal actions on properties involved in suspected deed theft.

