Sen. Cynthia Lummis: Crypto regulation bill could prevent another FTX-style crisis – By Julie Tsirkin (NBC News) / July 19, 2023
A bipartisan congressional duo have reworked a plan to regulate the crypto market with more consumer protections.
WASHINGTON — Following a tumultuous year for crypto, a bipartisan duo in Congress is seeking to direct the U.S. government to regulate the industry with a bill that, they say, could prevent another FTX-style disaster.
Last week, Sens. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., introduced a reworked bill based on the one they revealed months before the collapse of FTX last fall; they have dubbed it “the most comprehensive” bill to address the digital currency space.
“We know how to regulate it. We know how to safely define what is a commodity and what is a security,” Lummis said in an interview at her office in the Senate Russell Building. “We can put sufficient consumer protections and safeguards on this industry so that something like the failure of FTX would likely not happen in the United States.”
Their proposal would, for the first time, draw a clear line between a security and a commodity, and allocate enforcement authority to the agencies that oversee them.
