Congressional Blows to Cryptocurrency !!!
The Financial Services House subcommittee held a meeting on Wednesday 14/3/2018, which should be a general overview of the cryptocurrency landscape. The two-hour hearing raises more questions than answers, and highlights the skepticism of congressmen deep in the digital currency.
"Cryptocurrencies are jars," said Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) To begin his opening remarks. "They allow several dozen men in my district to sit in their pajamas all day and tell their wives they will become millionaires."
Sherman has a lot of concerns about cryptocurrency, because Bitcoin has the ability to fund terrorists, tax evasion and start-up companies who want to commit fraud, he said, adding that bitcoin cut the US dollar as a source of $ 50 billion in Fed revenue.
The committee was asked to discuss the initial coin offerings, or ICO, used by the company to raise venture capital and products. This year, there is already an ICO of $ 2.6 billion, according to a recent study from Autonomous Next.
Sherman accused the cryptocurrency community of using the term ICO to "commit fraud to the public and convey that image like an IPO." "They stole intellectual property and trademarks from legitimate investments and applied them to gambling schemes, as well as no social benefits," Sherman said.
The Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States has upgraded the regulation on fundraising efforts. Commission Chairman Jay Clayton, and J. Christopher Giancarlo, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, wrote in a commentary in the Wall Street Journal in January that, "The SEC devotes much of its resources to the ICO market."
The SEC's announcement last week that it would require exchange of digital assets to register with the agency helped send the bitcoin price below the $ 10,000 level. Bitcoin fell 9 percent on Wednesday, below $ 8,300.
Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.), Chairman of the subcommittee said that it knows that this has moved very quickly. "Congress will not sit idly by the lack of protection for investors."
Huizenga referred to an ICO market study that will soon be published by MIT professor Christian Catalini, who estimates that $ 270 million to $ 317 million of money put forward by coin offerings "is likely just a fraud."
Mike Lempres, the principal legal and risk officer of Coinbase, was among those who testified before the Capital Market, Securities and Investment Subcommittee. Twenty percent of the company's workforce is committed to complying, and Coinbase "waits for dust to be completed" before actively engaging in supporting the ICO, he said.
"Once the rules are clear we will move," said Lempres.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) Committee members Asked for attention to the lack of investment protection for the digital currency investors.
"They pour their life savings into virtual currency and they can bear losing a lot of money when the bubble finally explodes," Maloney said.
He said he was working on a bill that "will govern the virtual currency but not the technology," with the protection of "strong" investors, including the disclosures to be governed by the SEC.
Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) Advocate a more hands-off approach.
"This is something Democrats and Republicans should celebrate here in Congress will not be 'oh my gosh, this is terrible, we do not understand it'," says Emmer, who is a member of the Congress's Caucus Blocker.
He urged members of Congress not to seek "new police" and not "take the police we already have and give them more power to start attacking the region and possibly frustrate development."
"I realize there must be rules but there must be a balance," he said.
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