Sam Bankman-Fried summoned to Congress

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Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO and founder of FTX exchange, will be in court along with five other CEOs that represent digital currency companies on December 8.

Bankman-Fried, along with Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle; Brian Brooks, CEO of Bitfury Group; Charles Cascarilla, CEO of Paxos Trust Company; Denelle Dixon, CEO and Executive Director of Stellar Development Foundation; and Alesia Jeanne Haas, Chief Financial Officer of Coinbase Global Inc., will be testifying in front of the House Financial Services Committee.

The hearing is titled, “Digital Assets and the Future of Finance: Understanding the challenges and benefits of financial innovation in the USA,” and the executives will be fielding questions that revolve around that topic.

Regulation is coming

This isn’t the first time that a government body has summoned individuals representing digital currency and digital asset companies to learn more about the nascent industry. The United States government is looking to regulate the digital currency space and has held several hearings related to digital assets and blockchain technology where industry representatives and experts give lawmakers insight into the emerging sector.

Gary Gensler, the chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), has made his stance on digital currencies clear. Back in September, Gensler spoke at a Washington Post webinar titled, “The Path Forward: Cryptocurrency with Gary Gensler.”

Throughout the webinar, Gensler was constructively critical of the digital currency markets, saying that many of the companies with coins and tokens have not registered with the proper government agencies to do so and that the lack of regulation and enforcement Gensler sees in the industry will catalyze lawmakers into taking action.

Before lawmakers take action, they are actively learning more about the blockchain and digital asset space, its advantages, and its drawbacks.

Bankman-Fried and the US government

Law enforcement and regulation are coming, but I don’t expect it to be as severe as government officials are making it out to be.

Why? Because Bankman-Fried is the second-largest donor to the Biden presidential campaign. Although legal frameworks will be created and enforced, I doubt that Joe Biden’s good friend Bankman-Fried would be negatively impacted by what’s to come.

Because Bankman-Fried has this financial relationship with the current president of the United States, I would expect the FTX exchange founder to be very influential when it comes to how laws are created, what laws are created, and who gets affected.

As long as Joe Biden is the president of the United States and Sam Bankman-Fried is involved in the digital currency space, I would expect positive growth to take place in the digital currency industry; because it would be a shame if the second largest contributor to Biden’s campaign was financially stunted due to policies that Biden approved, and therefore, I think that is unlikely to happen.

Watch: CoinGeek New York, Digital Currency as a Tool for Financial Inclusion