In a statement following the FTX fall, anti-crypto Congressman Brad Sherman said that FTX had supported Democrats in their efforts to influence crypto rules and that he was right to call for the SEC to take action against unregistered exchanges in early 2022.
He also said that in the upcoming weeks, he and his colleagues would discuss potential federal crypto legislation.
SBF’s Political Donations
Sherman asserted that millionaire crypto celebrities had “flooded Washington” with millions of dollars. Although these payments were passed off as contributions to campaigns,
He said that Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of FTX, has received a lot of attention for his political contributions to Democrats; nevertheless, the majority of those funds were used for primaries (usually unsuccessfully) rather than to help Democrats defeat Republicans.
Sherman continued by saying that he saw FTX Bahamas co-CEO Ryan Salame contribute over $23 million to Republican candidates.
Sherman Reaffirms Anti-crypto Stance
Sherman agreed that FTX’s collapse resulted in significant financial losses but added that the entire extent of the situation is still unknown. He stressed the significance of understanding the “management mistakes that contributed to this disaster” and acting.
He asserted that his perspective on the cryptocurrency market had been validated and encouraged the SEC to act forcefully in the same way to avert future disasters of a similar nature.
He said that he had argued for years that Congress and federal regulators should take a tough stance against the numerous hazards that cryptocurrencies pose to society.
He added that he believes that the SEC now more than ever needs to move decisively to eliminate the regulatory limbo in which the cryptocurrency business has existed.
Sherman’s utterances are a manifestation of resurgent anti-crypto attitudes that had slowed down for about two years. Kraken’s CEO Jesse Powell clearly sees these voices growing and that could be why he said that the FTX collapse had set the crypto industry back 3 years.
Attempts are being made to clean up the crypto space and to reduce risk by powerful voices such as Binance CEO CZ and Tron Founder Justin Sun. All this is happening as fears of more crypto exchanges going insolvent continue to linger.
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