Blockchain Critic – Congresswoman Maxine Waters – Calls 6 Crypto CEOs to Testify Before House Finance Committee

On Wednesday, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (NYSE:WAT) (D-CA), Chairwoman of the House Committee on Financial Services, announced that she’s convening the full Committee in an in-person and remote session to grill six CEOs of various cryptocurrency companies. The hybrid session titled “Digital Assets and the Future of Finance: Understanding the Challenges and Benefits of Financial Innovation in the United States” will be held at 10 am ET on Wednesday, Dec. 8.

According to the Congresswoman’s press release, the following witnesses will be in attendance:

• Jeremy Allaire, CEO, Circle
• Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO, FTX
• Brian Brooks, CEO, Bitfury
• Chad Cascarilla, CEO, Paxos
• Denelle Dixon, CEO, Stellar Development Foundation
• Alesia Haas, CEO, Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) Inc. and CFO, Coinbase Global Inc.

Rep. Waters has been an ardent critic of blockchain technology and cryptos in general. In December, she told President-elect Biden to reverse or monitor a series of favorable crypto-related guidelines issued by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), including a provision that allowed banks to store stablecoins for clients.

Earlier this year, she formed a Digital Assets Working Group of Democratic Members, comprising a panel of her political peers skeptical of crypto with the intent to “engage with regulators and experts to do a deep dive on this poorly understood and minimally regulated industry.”

Her latest press release further noted that since becoming Chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee, Waters has, “…transformed the Committee to focus its agenda on fairness, protecting consumers and investors, which includes accountability of large financial institutions and emerging tech products and services. She has made it a practice to call Committee hearings with CEOs of major financial institutions and companies to hold them accountable.”

Some of the other top tech executives that Waters has brought before her committee as part of her accountability agenda include Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) CEO, Mark Zuckerberg and Head of Novi digital wallet, David Marcus.

On The Flipside

• Many House and Senate Democrats have been skeptical and critical of cryptocurrencies.
• If past performance is any indication, expect Chairwoman Waters to be confrontational and antagonistic to the invited witnesses.

Why You Should Care?

This political theater will likely be a public lashing of the attending crypto executives to cast the entire industry in a negative light, thereby validating the need for Draconian regulations.

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