Congressman Brad Sherman Trashes Crypto During Recent Hearing

During a recent congressional hearing devoted to the collapse of the FTX exchange and the downfall of its founder Sam Bankman-Fried, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) compared crypto to a “garden of snakes.”

“My fear is that we will view Sam Bankman-Fried as just one big snake in the crypto Garden of Eden. The fact is, crypto is a garden of snakes,” Sherman said. 

The Southern California congressman says that crypto aims to compete with the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency and enrich “corporate billionaire bros.” 

Sanction evaders, drug dealers, and other criminals find crypto attractive, Sherman says. The lawmaker adds that tax evasion is also a big market for the nascent asset class. “But the big market is tax evasion, and I know that there are some on the other side who cheer every time a billionaire escapes taxes,” he added. 

Calling Bankman-Fried “Inmate 14372,” Sherman argues that the disgraced FTX founder lobbied to keep the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) outside of crypto because he wanted “baby regulation” from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).  

Sherman is known as one of the harshest cryptocurrency critics on Capitol Hill who has been calling for a blanket cryptocurrency ban for years. In a recent interview, the congressman admitted that the U.S. was unlikely to prohibit crypto. He explained that the crypto lobby had become too powerful, which makes a total ban impossible for now.