Recently, U.S. Congressman\u00a0Brad Sherman\u00a0(D-CA), who is one of the biggest crypto skeptics in Washington, D.C., said in a recent interview that once there is more regulatory clarity in the U.S., crypto would lose its main advantage over the dollar.<\/p>\n
Congressman Sherman, who was \u201cborn and raised in southern California\u201d is \u201ccurrently serving his thirteenth\u00a0term in Congress and has served in the House of Representatives since 1997.\u201d He is \u201ca senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee, and a member of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2019, Sherman was \u201celected to serve as Chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Investor Protection, Entrepreneurship and Capital Markets.\u201d He has a law degree from Harvard University, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude.<\/p>\n
On 9 May 2019, Congressman Sherman called for a complete ban (in the U.S.) on cryptocurrency:<\/p>\n
On 13 May 2019, during an\u00a0interview\u00a0with CoinDesk at Consensus 2019, former Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul\u00a0called Sherman \u201cjust another thug in Washington\u201d and went on to say:<\/p>\n
\u201cThey happen to believe they know what is best and they will run the show. They want to be the boss, they\u2019re dictators, and he\u2019s not unusual\u2026 He\u2019s very typical in all degrees in all issues, whether it\u2019s a social issue, like a few years ago when they decided the worst thing in the world is smoking marijuana.<\/em>\u201c<\/p>\n On 19 July 2022, Sherman was hating on crypto again. At a\u00a0hearing\u00a0(titled \u201cOversight of the SEC\u2019s Division of Enforcement\u201d) before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services, he asked Gurbir S. Grewal, Director of the Division of Enforcement at the SEC:<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve gone after XRP because XRP is a security, but you haven\u2019t 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?<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cAnd is it enough that the crypto exchange have said, \u2018well, having committed tens of thousands of violations in the past, we promise not to do any more in the future\u2019. Is that enough to get you off the hook for enforcement?<\/em>\u201c<\/p>\n Sherman later went on to criticize the SEC for not going after the major exchanges (such as Coinbase) that allowed trading of XRP in the U.S. before 22 December 2020, which is when the SEC\u00a0announced\u00a0that it had \u201cfiled an action against Ripple Labs\u00a0Inc. and two of its executives, who are also significant security holders, alleging that they raised over $1.3 billion through an unregistered, ongoing digital asset securities offering.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Sherman told Grewal:<\/p>\n \u201cIt is easier to go after the small fish than the big fish, but the big fish operating the major exchanges did many, many tens of thousands of transactions with XRP. You know it\u2019s a security \u2014 that means they were illegally operating a securities exchange. They know it\u2019s illegal because they stopped doing it, even though it was profitable\u2026 I hope you focus on that.<\/em>\u201c<\/p>\n https:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=-PaNVenH2T4%3Ffeature%3Doembed<\/p>\n According to a\u00a0report\u00a0published by Los Angeles Times on September 4, Sherman told The Times:<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019re going to get [to a ban] anytime soon\u2026 Money for lobbying and money for campaign contributions works, or people wouldn\u2019t do it; and that\u2019s why we haven\u2019t banned crypto. We didn\u2019t ban it at the beginning because we didn\u2019t realize it was important, and we didn\u2019t ban it now because there\u2019s too much money and power behind it.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n He also called crypto a Ponzi scheme:<\/p>\n \u201cIt is hard to be running the subcommittee dedicated to investor protection in a country in which people want to wager on [meme coins]\u2026 Cryptocurrency is a meme you invest in, in the hopes that you can sell it to somebody else before it tanks. That\u2019s the nice thing about a Ponzi scheme.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n On September 9, Sherman appeared on a CNBC Special (\u201cCrypto Night in America\u201d) to \u201cdiscuss his belief that cryptocurrencies should be banned and the need to regulate them in the interim.\u201d<\/p>\n According to a report by The Daily Hodl, during this interview, Sherman said:<\/p>\n