Sherrod Brown Suggests Prohibiting Crypto in the US

The anti-crypto rhetoric has been ramping up in the United States. The latest lawmaker to deride the entire ecosystem is Senate banking chairman Sherrod Brown who suggested a full-out crypto ban.

Brown is an ardent anti-crypto campaigner, just like his Senate colleague Elizabeth Warren. The pair has been actively working to quash the entire crypto sector in the United States.

Sherrod Brown is the chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. Over the weekend, he told NBC that the Treasury and all federal agencies should join forces to take action against the crypto sector.

He even went as far as suggesting a crypto ban in the country, according to a report by The Hill on Dec. 18:

“Maybe banning it, although banning it is very difficult because it will go offshore and who knows how that will work,”

A Crypto Ban Won’t Work

Waving angry fists at Bitcoin and its brethren will solve nothing, and neither will banning the embryonic asset class. The primary reason FTX split into two entities was that there is no regulatory framework in the U.S.

Traders and investors were forced offshore to an unregulated exchange that ultimately collapsed. Developing a productive framework to ensure there are safeguards for crypto investors should be the main priority. Not bringing down the ban hammer as these bankers and Senators would like.

Brown commented that the cryptocurrency market is a “complicated, unregulated pot of money,” declaring that the issue was much larger than FTX.

Just like Senator Warren, Brown views crypto as a threat to national security. He also believes the entire sector is a swindle designed to scam unwitting participants.

Brown said he had spent much of his eight years as the Senate Banking Chair trying to “educate” his colleagues and:

“trying to educate the public about crypto and the dangers that it presents to our security as a nation and the consumers that get hoodwinked by them.”

Last week, Elizabeth Warren unleashed another of her tirades against the crypto industry. “Rogue nations, oligarchs, and drug lords are using crypto to launder billions, evade sanctions and finance terrorism,” she proclaimed.

Her proposed crypto bill aims to force blockchain architecture, such as nodes and validators to register as “financial institutions.”

Crypto Markets See Red

Crypto markets are still consolidating and have been largely inactive over the weekend. Total capitalization dipped below $840 billion during Monday morning’s Asian trading session.

As a result, markets are dropping toward their cycle low again, but there has yet to be another panic sell-off.