US Congressman Tom Emmer (R-Minnesota) thinks crypto-critical lawmakers and regulators just want to maintain their control over the country’s financial system.
Emmer, the House Majority Whip and a crypto supporter, says in a new interview with Laura Shin that crypto shouldn’t be a partisan issue.
He calls crypto-skeptical Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) a “control-freak senator.”
“Elizabeth Warren, she may not love central banks, but she does love the design. I believe that she ultimately wants banks to be a utility, a government utility, and not privately owned. But that part aside, she desperately wants to hold on to the centralization and control that comes with central banking. And while I’m not opposed to central banking – I think it does serve an important function and we’re always going to have the traditional, in my mind, a two-tier banking system that we’ve become accustomed to – it’s going to have to evolve into the 21st Century.
And when you talk about digital assets and crypto, they can’t stop it. If China can’t stop it when they outlawed all mining, which they haven’t been able to completely accomplish, what do you think the country that still practices freedom is going to do?”
Warren has taken aim at the crypto industry in recent years, arguing that it enables money laundering. In 2022, she urged the Treasury Department to do anything it can to “rein in crypto.” Last month, she sent an open letter addressed to Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao and Binance.US CEO Brian Shroder, accusing the exchange of evading the enforcement of anti-money laundering laws, securities laws and information reporting requirements.
In his recent interview, Emmer also criticizes Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair Gary Gensler, who he calls a “Warren disciple.”
“This guy, in my mind, is a bad-faith regulator. He’s been blindly spraying the crypto community with enforcement actions while completely missing the truly bad actors. And people ask, ‘What are we doing?’ We’re going to continue to raise the siren of hypocrisy to show how hypocritical their behavior is.”
The SEC launched a lawsuit against Ripple in December 2020, alleging the San Francisco payments company sold XRP as an unregistered security for years. The high-profile court case remains ongoing.
Last month, the regulator also sent a Wells Notice to top US crypto exchange Coinbase, noting it had made a “preliminary determination” to recommend filing an enforcement action against the company for allegedly violating securities laws.
Additionally, Gensler has recently argued that all crypto assets besides Bitcoin (BTC) are securities.
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