The beleaguered cryptocurrency industry, although it might disagree about being in trouble, has been thrown a lifeline:
A highly anticipated Senate proposal to bring the freewheeling cryptocurrency industry under federal oversight would deliver a win for the sector by empowering its preferred regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), over the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The bill’s sponsors, Sens. Cynthia M. Lummis (R-Wyo.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), are touting it as the first serious effort to apply comprehensive regulation to the crypto industry, which has minted a new class of billionaires and promised to reinvent financial services while also spawning scams and investor wipeouts that have raised regulators’ alarms. [WaPo]
While there’s blather about whether the SEC or the CFTC should be in charge, the point here is that there is official recognition of the industry, in a positive manner, by Senators.
Senators who will now be inclined to run interference for the industry.
It has many months before it is signed into law, if ever. But now there are some, in official positions, apt to protect the industry from being, say, stamped out.
