Senators in the U.S. say if Congress is going to get serious about establishing crypto regulations, they need to be bipartisan. This means both democrats and republicans need to agree on how the rules should play out and what they should accomplish.
Congress Needs to Find Common Ground
Over the last six years, one can easily say that both sides of the political spectrum have been at war with each other. It’s an ugly sight, in many ways. Both democrats and republicans are consistently at each other’s throats and trying to do things that the opposing sides would not approve of. In the meantime, American citizens have all gotten caught in the middle of the fight, and the whole thing feels like an ongoing game with no ending.
Ever since the fall of FTX, many members of Congress and the federal government say crypto regulation is a must in the United States, though to be fair, they have been saying this for years and that regulation has not yet come. Who’s to assume this time is going to be any different?
Senator Thom Tillis – a republican from the state of North Carolina – is in agreement with the idea that everything needs to be bipartisan, claiming in an interview that this was the only way Congress was going to “get something done.” This was a statement bolstered by John Hickenlooper, a democrat from Colorado, who stated:
I think that’s what allows our society to change, to innovate, to find better ways of doing things.
Right now, there’s a lot of concern and ideas floating back and forth about which agency should have the highest authority over the crypto space (whether it be the SEC or the CFTC). Tillis commented on that situation with:
That’s still up in the air. I, right now, do not have a lot of confidence in the SEC, particularly with some of the rapid rulemaking and [a] number of other things.
Hickenlooper also threw his two cents into the mix on this subject, saying:
There is an obvious divergence of views between the two parties. There’s going to have to be guardrails around the… authority we give it so that both sides can be comfortable.
The SEC has been heavily criticized in recent weeks for its gestapo approach towards policing the crypto space. The agency only appears to be doing this through prosecution and going after as many companies as it can. One of the most recent cases involved U.S. crypto trading platform Kraken, based in California. Both entities reached a settlement that forced Kraken to part with $30 million and cease all its staking activities and services.
Sorting Out All the Ideas
Regarding present regulatory ideas, Tillis finished with:
We’re completing that inventory now and hope to share it over the next couple of weeks.
