- Congressman Brad Sherman has become an instant cryptocurrency meme following his five minutes of fame at yesterday’s congressional hearing
- Sherman was the lone critic of the crypto sector and made nonsensical comments about fictional cryptocurrencies
- Sherman has railed against the crypto sector since 2019, but stood alone yesterday
Congressman Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) has become an instant meme after his performance during yesterday’s US House Financial Services Committee hearing on cryptocurrencies. Sherman spent his five-minute time slot railing bizarrely on the prevalence in the space of meaningless coins before complaining to Coinbase’s Alesia Haas that the company charges transaction fees. A 20-second clip of Sherman wittering on about mongoosecoin, cobracoin, and more has been seen millions of times on Twitter and has made Sherman a laughing stock and instant meme.
tell me you don’t understand crypto without telling me you don’t understand cryptopic.twitter.com/boToAl3qjd
— LilMoonLambo (@LilMoonLambo) December 8, 2021
Sherman Has Previous When it Comes to Crypto Hatred
Sherman has professed his dislike of cryptocurrencies on many occasions. In 2019 he called for a China-style ban on the entire sector which he followed up in January of 2020 saying that it Bitcoin was becoming a hive for terrorists, which went against all reports at the time. It was no surprise therefore to hear Sherman, whose re-election campaigns are backed by banks and credit companies, denigrate cryptocurrencies again.
Sherman first claimed that “Bitcoin could be displaced by Ether which could be displaced by DOGE which…er…be placed by Hamstercoin” before really going off the deep end:
And then there’s cobracoin…and what could mongoosecoin to do crypto coin?
Sherman also complained to Haas that if he made a trade on Coinbase and took the same value out that he would end up with less than he put in due to transaction fees. Not only did he get the transaction fee wrong and had to be corrected by Haas, he also neglected to mention that such fees are commonplace across almost every single exchange in every kind of asset class in the world.
Congressional Hearing The Most Positive Ever
Sherman was about to launch into another presumably baseless or ludicrous criticism of crypto currency when he realised his five minutes was up, although he looked almost relieved to have been put out of his misery.
What was most striking about Sherman’s testimony was that he was the lone critic in what is generally considered to have been the most positive and nuanced discussion of blockchain and cryptocurrency that has ever taken place in U.S. congress, as noted by those who should know:
Today’s HFSC hearing was the most positive, constructive, & bipartisan public event on crypto I’ve seen in Congress — ever. I mean that literally.
It’s a testament to the effectiveness of industry & community engagement in DC in recent months. We’ve made shockingly big progress.
— Jake Chervinsky (@jchervinsky) December 8, 2021
Well #crypto community… engagement in Washington is working! I think it’s clear from today’s hearing that we’ve turned a corner. Keep building. We’ll keep educating. #wagmi
— Kristin Smith (@KMSmithDC) December 8, 2021
Sherman’s reasons for denigrating cryptocurrency are well founded, but the fact that he has gone from being the most vocal of all the critics to a lone wolf howling madly in an empty field while looking around for fictional mongooses and cobras is more telling than any of his actual criticism.
