Senator Pat Toomey (R-Pa) urged US lawmakers to embrace cryptocurrency and gain an advantage over China after the People’s Bank of China yet again declared on Friday that “Virtual currency-related business activities are illegal financial activities.”
In response to this, Toomey, who joined crypto supporters Cynthia Lummis (R- Wyo), Ron Wyden (D-Ore) to introduce amendments to the crypto tax provision last month, yet again came in support of crypto by tweeting,
“China’s authoritarian crackdown on crypto, including Bitcoin, is a big opportunity for the U.S. It’s also a reminder of our huge structural advantage over China.”
Toomey’s crypto-friendly approach gained a lot of support from the cryptocurrency industry, which has been trying to get its voice heard as lawmakers in the US struggle to comprehend just how important this nascent technology is.
Jake Chervinsky, a general counsel at DeFi project Compound Finance, noted that with 38.4k likes, it was Toomey’s fourth most-liked tweet and “Engagement like this matters.”
“We are being heard. It may get worse before it gets better, but time & trend are on our side.”
Toomey further called crypto and blockchain technology the “most exciting innovation in finance in decades” and added that
“economic liberty leads to faster growth, and ultimately, a higher standard of living for all.”
The same day, Toomey sent a letter to US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler and called for regulatory clarity while expressing disappointment in the agency’s current approach to the crypto space.
Ever since taking the job of the boss of the top Wall Street regulator in April this year, Gensler has been repeating that cryptos are a “highly speculative” asset class and the majority of the coins on exchanges are securities while asking for more power to regulate the space.
In his letter, the Senator admonished the SEC for adopting a “strategy of regulation-by-enforcement” instead of “proactively” providing rules of the road to industry.
He noted how the SEC boasts of its success in pursuing crypto-related enforcement actions while at the same time fails to “identify the securities involved or the rationale for their status as securities” that would provide the much-needed public regulatory clarity.
Toomey also pointed to other SEC Commissioners, Hester Peirce and Elad Roisman, who said they were “disappointed” by the SEC’s failure to explain which digital assets were securities.
The Senator concluded by asking for detailed explanations from the SEC to provide the industry clarity “so that innovators have the guidance they need to ensure domestic investment and innovation in these technologies.”
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