- Congressman Brad Sherman has said that the crypto sector now has too much political power to be banned
- Sherman said that big money is now going into lobbying, with man senators now behind the movement ideologically
- Sherman embarrassed himself during a congressional hearing last year when trying to criticise cryptocurrencies
Congressman Brad Sherman, the man who famously asked “what could mongoose coin do to crypto coin?” during an attempt to denigrate cryptocurrencies, has said that the crypto sector now exerts too much political influence to be banned. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Sherman, whose re-election campaigns are backed by banks and credit companies, warned that the crypto space was nothing but a Ponzi scheme and suggested that the crypto space should be overseen by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which has already proved itself singularly unsuited to doing so.
Sherman and Crypto Have History
Sherman first came to the attention of the crypto community in March 2018 when he criticised Bitcoin and ICOs, but really made a name for himself in January 2020 when he warned over terrorists using bitcoin for fundraising, without realising that it would be better for law enforcement if they did, due to its traceability.
Sherman then then surpassed himself in December last year when he went totally off the rails while trying to criticise the sector:
tell me you don’t understand crypto without telling me you don’t understand cryptopic.twitter.com/boToAl3qjd
— LilMoonLambo (@LilMoonLambo) December 8, 2021
Crypto is Playing the Game
Crypto It seems that Sherman has not lost his love of hating crypto. In the LA Times interview, Sherman called crypto “a meme you invest in, in the hopes that you can sell it to somebody else before it tanks”, adding that, “That’s the nice thing about a Ponzi scheme.”
However, he also realises that in not banning it at the outset, officials now can’t put the genie back in the bottle, especially when the crypto space can now wield political power and influence:
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 realise it was important, and we didn’t ban it now because there’s too much money and power behind it.
Sherman also told the newspaper he believes crypto should be regulated by the SEC because of its “size, expertise, aggressive enforcement actions and because of crypto’s similarity to a stock or security”. This is despite (or perhaps because of) the agency’s utter failure to engage with those in the crypto space over a regulatory framework and its modus operandi of regulation by enforcement.
