InfoBytes Blog
House Oversight seeks info from digital asset exchanges, financial regulators
On August 30, the Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform announced that Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), Chair of the Subcommittee, sent letters to the U.S. Treasury Department, SEC, CFTC, and FTC, in addition to five digital asset exchanges, requesting information on how they are combating cryptocurrency-related fraud and scams. According to his letters, Chairman Krishnamoorthi is “concerned about the growth of fraud and consumer abuse linked to cryptocurrencies.” He further added that “[t]he lack of a central authority to flag suspicious transactions in many situations, the irreversibility of transactions, and the limited understanding many consumers and investors have of the underlying technology make cryptocurrency a preferred transaction method for scammers.” In the letters to the federal agencies, he stated that “the federal government has been slow to curb cryptocurrency scams and fraud,” and that “[e]xisting federal regulations do not comprehensively or clearly cover cryptocurrencies under all circumstances.” In one of the letters to the digital asset exchanges, Krishnamoorthi noted that “cryptocurrency exchanges must themselves act to protect consumers conducting transactions through their platforms.” The letters requested that all recipients provide information to the subcommittee outling “steps they are taking to combat cryptocurrency-related fraud and scams and additional actions that are needed to protect Americans” in order to “help Congress understand what they are doing to protect consumers and inform legislative solutions to bring stability to the digital asset industry.”