US Lawmaker Says Too Much Money and Power Behind Crypto to Ban It

US Lawmaker Says Too Much Money and Power Behind Crypto to Ban It – In an interview with the Los Angeles Times that was published on Sunday, Congressman Brad Sherman (D-CA) discussed his opinions on cryptocurrencies and their regulation.

The Californian lawmaker who leads a House subcommittee on investor protection wants to make cryptocurrency outlawed, but he doesn’t think Congress will act in that way. He told the news outlet, “I don’t think we’re going to ban crypto anytime soon.”

“Money for lobbying and money for campaign contributions works, or people wouldn’t do it, and that’s why we haven’t banned crypto,” Sherman explained, elaborating: “We didn’t ban it at the beginning because we didn’t realize it was important, and we didn’t ban it now because there’s too much money and power behind it.”

The congressman is concerned about individual investors being taken advantage of, but he also sees cryptocurrency as a danger to American national security. According to him, cryptocurrencies are a systemic threat that enables criminals and threatens the dominance of the US dollar.

The legislator is especially concerned about cryptocurrency mixing services like Tornado Cash. The Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Treasury Department prohibited the Ethereum mixing application in August on the grounds that it had aided North Korean hackers like the Lazarus Group hacking collective.

Sherman acknowledged that there isn’t much he can do to stop investors from making careless financial decisions. The American lawmaker said: “It is hard to be running the subcommittee dedicated to investor protection in a country in which people want to wager on meme coins.” “Cryptocurrency is a meme you invest in, in the hopes that you can sell it to somebody else before it tanks. That’s the nice thing about a Ponzi scheme.”

Sherman then discussed cryptocurrency regulation in the absence of a ban. He compares cryptocurrency to a stock or investment and thinks the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) should regulate the space due to the regulator’s size, expertise, and aggressive enforcement techniques.

US Lawmaker Says Too Much Money and Power Behind Crypto to Ban It – However, three bills to make the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) the primary regulator of the cryptocurrency business have been submitted to Congress this year.

Sherman encouraged the SEC to pursue significant cryptocurrency exchanges that traded XRP in July. The securities watchdog reported taking 97 enforcement proceedings relating to cryptocurrencies in January. The agency announced in May that it had almost doubled the size of its crypto enforcement unit.