U.S. Congressman Brad Sherman (D-CA), one of the most vocal cryptocurrency skeptics in Washington, D.C., recently was interviewed by the Los Angeles Times, and he explains why he doesn’t think the U.S. will ban cryptocurrencies “anytime soon.”
He was born and raised in southern California, Congressman Sherman is now serving his thirteenth term in Congress and has served in the House of Representatives since 1997. He is a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and a member of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee.
In 2019, Sherman was elected to serve as Chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Investor Protection, Entrepreneurship, and Capital Markets. He went to Harvard University and got a law degree there. He graduated with honors through the Magna Cum Laude program.
Brad Sherman’s Point of View on Cryptocurrency
Most of Representative Brad Sherman’s colleagues in Congress have opinions opposed to his. The Democrat representing the Northridge area is not just unsure about crypto; he hates it and sees it as a threat to U.S. national security.
On May 9, 2019, Congressman Brad Sherman advocated for a total prohibition of cryptocurrency in the United States:
Sherman continued his criticism of cryptocurrency on Tuesday (July 19). During a hearing before the Committee on Financial Services of the United States House of Representatives, which was headlined “Oversight of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement,” he questioned Gurbir S. Grewal, Director of the Division of Enforcement of the SEC, over the following:
“You’ve gone after XRP because XRP is a security, but you haven’t gone after all the major crypto exchanges that process tens of thousands if not far more transactions. If XRP is a security and you think it is and I think it is, why are these crypto exchanges not in violation of law?”
Sherman subsequently criticized the SEC for not going after the leading exchanges (like Coinbase) that enabled trading of XRP in the United States until December 22, 2020. This was the day that the SEC said it had filed a lawsuit against Ripple Labs Inc. and two of its executives, who are also large security holders, claiming that they raised over $1.3 billion through an unregistered, continuing digital asset securities offering.
Like most other crypto opponents, Sherman fears that private investors will be scammed. Sherman also worries that cryptocurrencies are a more significant threat to the system because they give criminals and others who break human rights an advantage and make the U.S. dollar less critical.
He is particularly concerned about services such as Tornado Cash, a cryptocurrency mixer. The Treasury Department accuses Tornado Cash of laundering over $7 billion since 2019. The company is accused of accepting payments and shuffling them through other accounts, making it nearly impossible to trace them.
The following is what Sherman was quoted as saying to The Times in an article that was published by the Los Angeles Times on September 4:
“I don’t think we’re going to get [to a ban] anytime soon… Money for lobbying and money for campaign contributions works, or people wouldn’t do it; and that’s why we haven’t banned crypto. We didn’t ban it at the beginning because we didn’t realize it was important, and we didn’t ban it now because there’s too much money and power behind it.“
