US Lawmaker Suggests ‘Maybe’ Crypto Should Be Banned Citing Bigger Issues Than FTX

A U.S. senator has recommended that cryptocurrency ought to “maybe” be banned following the collapse of crypto trade FTX. However, he acknowledged that banning crypto “is very difficult because it will go offshore and who knows how that will work.”

Senator Sherrod Brown Suggests Banning Crypto

U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), the chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, talked about cryptocurrency in an interview with NBC Sunday.

He acknowledged that the Treasury Department and all of the totally different regulatory companies, together with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), must get collectively and assess any doable motion associated to the cryptocurrency market. Referring to the SEC and CFTC, the senator mentioned:

We need them to do what they should do. At the identical time, perhaps banning it, though banning it is rather tough as a result of it’s going to go offshore and who is aware of how that can work.

Last week, the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee held a hearing on the collapse of cryptocurrency trade FTX. The House Financial Services Committee additionally held a separate listening to on FTX a day prior.

FTX filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 11 and its former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) has been arrested and is now in jail within the Bahamas. He and his crypto agency are going through a number of fraud charges introduced towards them by the U.S. authorities and regulators. The U.S. is in search of Bankman-Fried’s extradition. However, SBF instructed the Bahamas court docket Monday that he’ll decide solely after he has seen all of the indictments towards him.

Senator Brown on Crypto Regulation

The senator from Ohio additionally mentioned Sunday that the cryptocurrency market is a “complicated, unregulated pot of money” and the difficulty was a lot bigger than FTX. “So we’ve got to do this right,” he careworn.

“I’ve spent much of the last eight years and a half in this job as chair of the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee,” Brown continued, elaborating:

Educating my colleagues and attempting to teach the general public about crypto and the hazards that it presents to our safety as a nation and the customers that get hoodwinked by them.

Last week, Senator Pat Toomey explained in his opening remarks on the Senate listening to on FTX that the crypto trade’s fallout doesn’t justify banning or “pausing” crypto. “Some of my colleagues have suggested pausing cryptocurrencies before we can address it. This is profoundly misguided, not to mention impossible. Short of enacting draconian, authoritarian policies, cryptocurrency cannot be stopped. If we tried, the technology would simply migrate offshore,” he warned.

What do you consider the banning crypto suggestion by Senator Sherrod Brown? Let us know within the feedback part beneath.