Congressman brad Sherman is famous for controversial statements about cryptocurrency. For example, in March he called their “fraud”. However, on 18 July, he went so far that at the meeting of the Subcommittee of the Committee on financial services of the lower chamber of Congress has acted to completely deprive Americans of the cryptocurrency market. A report with a report on the hearings was published by CoinDesk.
The representative of California Democrats Sherman, the largest sponsor of which is the processing service Allied Wallet, stated:
We should prohibit US citizens to buy and mine cryptocurrencies.
He added that in the future of cryptocurrency can play the role of money, and in this they are used for tax evasion and circumvention of sanctions imposed by the us authorities in States with authoritarian and criminal regimes.
Colleagues did not support the point of view of the Sherman. For example, Norbert Michael, Director of the analytical center at the Heritage Foundation (the largest strategic research Institute, USA), did not agree that the use of cryptocurrencies exclusively confined to criminal trafficking. He said
It is true that criminals use bitcoin, but they also have planes, computers and cars. We should not criminalize these tools just because they are common in the underworld.
Although the center of the hearings were such topics as the General monetary policy and history, the debate on cryptocurrencies has shown that Subcommittee members generally opposed the idea of issuing government (issued by the Central Bank) of the digital currency.
It is worth noting that a number of the world’s Central banks for quite a long time studying the possibility to use the technological concepts underlying bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, to create new digital money systems. It is expected that new technologies will increase the transparency and efficiency of money. But there are fears that the emergence of the state of digital money will lead to a massive withdrawal of Bank deposits.
Committee members agreed that the idea of digital currency from the Central Bank raises the question of how the blockchain and cryptocurrency. In particular, Congressman bill foster, formerly known physicist and businessman, said,
Blockchain advertise as a registry, the data in which it is impossible to falsify. However, there remained the problem of user authentication.
For his part, Dr. ishwar Prasad, Professor at Cornell University, noticed that the blockchain can positively affect the system of financial services, especially in the field of payments. According to him, “crypto-currencies can facilitate transactions and reduce costs, but so far the benefits of this phenomenon is limited”.
The aforementioned Democrat Michael said about the issue of digital money by the Central Bank:
It is hard to imagine that bitcoin has replaced the dollar as long as the Federal reserve remains relatively effective Manager of the national currency, but that is why Congress must eliminate barriers to people wanting to use their chosen means of exchange and settlement.
At the conclusion of the hearing, the President Andy Barr noted that “the cryptocurrency will continue to have an increasing impact on the American financial system,” and promised that the Committee would return to this theme.
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