Following the crash of cryptocurrency change FTX, Senator Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey) declared (“US Lawmakers Name for Extra Crypto Regulation After FTX Collapse,” Monetary Instances, November 15, 2022):
This needs to be a renewed name for Congress to take a severe take a look at crypto exchanges and lending platforms, lots of which have interaction in dangerous behaviours, whereas advertising themselves as secure for shoppers.
Lets say one thing related with far more proof and idea to again up our declare: “It’s time to take a severe take a look at authorities, which engages in dangerous behaviors whereas advertising themselves as secure for residents.” Simply take into consideration federal energy and the general public debt, which improve with each emergency and in between, and really seldom recede.
The naïve conceit expressed by state rulers is just not restricted to 1 facet of the aisle. The Monetary Instances continues:
Cynthia Lummis — the Republican senator from Wyoming, who has co-written a bipartisan invoice that sketches out an entire regulatory framework for digital property within the US — described the FTX turbulence as “terrible and concurrently not all that stunning”.
“It’s apparent that Congress wants to control digital property,” she added.
That Sam Bankman-Fried, the entrepreneur who based and ran FTX, was an enormous donor to the Democratic Social gathering and allied teams doesn’t make the episode much less revealing (“Sam Bankman-Fried’s Fall Cuts Off Massive Supply of Funds for US Democrats,” Monetary Instances, November 13, 2022):
Earlier than the autumn of Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency change FTX, the entrepreneur had emerged because the second-largest donor to Democrats after George Soros. …
The entrepreneur was the second-largest donor to Democratic-leaning teams throughout the newest midterm elections, spending $36mn.
He did hedge his rent-seeking bets, however apparently solely with small quantities:
Through the 2022 cycle, Bankman-Fried donated $155,000 to rightwing Pacs: the Alabama Conservatives Fund, which backed Republican Alabama Senator-elect Katie Britt, a crypto supporter; and Heartland Resurgence, which backed Senator John Boozman of Arkansas, the highest Republican on the Senate agriculture committee that oversees crypto.
That the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Vitamin, and Forestry “oversees” cryptocurrencies is reasonably hilarious characteristic of the story.
