US Lawmakers Fear Crypto Could Become The “Financial 9/11”

US Lawmakers fear that crypto could become the “financial 9/11” as Rep Tedd Budd appeared on MakerDAO’s Maker Speaker Series to talk Defi, crypto and regulations as we are reading further in our latest cryptocurrency news today.

Rep. Ted Budd is a member of the Congressional Blockchain Caucus and he said that some of the members of the House Financial Services Committee have fears about DeFi and blockchain. Crypto has been the talk of Washington in the past few weeks as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Fed Chair Jerome Powell met behind closed doors to discuss the dangers of stablecoins. SEC Chair Gary Gensler said that tokenized stocks are securities and senator Elizabeth Warren urged regulation to protect small investors from crypto scams.

Rep. Ted Budd is a member of the House Financial Services Committee and the Congressional Blockchain Caucus who thinks that it is getting overheated for the House legislators as well:

“There are some on the Senate side and some on the House side which fear, especially when it comes to currency, the blockchain, decentralized finance and how it’s going to evolve… will it hurt our national sovereignty, will it destabilize the dollar, is it a threat to national security?You even have some in the House that sit not too far from me on the House Financial Services Committee that would call blockchain basically a financial 9/11.”

Budd didn’t name names of the US lawmakers fear but it was clear that Chairwoman Maxine Waters and Rashida Tlaib positioned themselves as crypto skeptics. Waters called for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to repeal the rules allowing federal banking charters to crypto asset custodians and Tlaib introduced the STABLE Act which will require stablecoin issuers like Circle to get banking charters while also maintaining adequate reserves in line with the FDIC standards. The hearing of the committee’s Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee this month raised concerns that the expansion of crypto trading could lead to the financial crisis aking to the 2008 subprime mortgage crises but it also provided opportunities for the lawmakers to question crypto experts directly.

Budd suggested that crypto innovations like decentralized finance, allow people to lend, borrow and trade without letting an intermediary like a bank handle the funds but not put the nation’s security at risk. On the contrary, he thinks that the US risks losing its hegemonic status if it doesn’t embrace the new technology:

“It’s going to evolve, and I’d rather it evolve here in the U.S. than…other nations that could be hostile to us. So, I’d rather it be on our shores, so we have a regulatory framework where people can expect what the future’s going to look like and they can develop inside that framework.”