The Senate Banking Committee’s Hearing On Cryptocurrencies
On February 6, 2018, the United States Senate Committee on Banking Housing and Urban Affairs (“Banking Committee”) held a hearing on “Virtual Currencies: The Oversight Role of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.” Both SEC Chairman Jay Clayton and CFTC Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo testified and provided written testimony. The marketplace as a whole had a positive reaction to the testimony, with Bitcoin prices immediately jumping up by over $1600. This blog reviews the testimony and provides my usual commentary.
The SEC and CFTC Share Joint Regulatory Oversight
The Banking Committee hearing follows SEC and CFTC joint statements on January 19, 2018 and a joint op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal published on January 25, 2018 (see HERE). As with other areas in capital markets, such as swaps, the SEC and CFTC have joint regulatory oversight over cryptocurrencies. Where the SEC regulates securities and securities markets, the CFTC
The Senate Banking Committee Passes Several Pro-Business Bills
On March 9, 2017, the Senate Banking Committee approved the first set of bills to go through the committee under the new administration. The five bills were cleared as one package and are aimed at making it easier for companies to grow and raise capital. The bills are bipartisan and could be some of the first to pass through Congress under the new regime. Only two Democrats opposed the bills: Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is consistently pushing for greater investor protections regardless of the impact on businesses, and Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed.
Interestingly, in 2016, most of these pro-business bills were passed by the House and never made it through the Senate. For a brief outline of the numerous House bills passed in 2016, see my blog HERE. Each of the current bills had already been presented in prior years, either as stand-alone bills or packaged with other provisions, but never made it through the Senate. The
