Ohio Congressman Warren Davidson was one of eight elected officials who recently sent a letter to the chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) with regards to how the agency gathers information from cryptocurrency companies.
According to a report by Bitcoin.com, U.S. Representatives Tom Emmer (R-MN), Darren Soto (D-FL), Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), Byron Donalds (R-FL), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Ted Budd (R-NC), and Ritchie Torres (D-NY) joined Davidson is sending this bipartisan letter to SEC chairman Gary Gensler on how the SEC collects information from cryptocurrency and blockchain companies.
In a tweet, Davidson stated: “We must promote American innovation rather than stifle it with an incoherent mix of bad regulation, selective enforcement, and ongoing inaction.” He added:
I joined Rep. Tom Emmer and colleagues sending a letter to SEC Chair Gary Gensler regarding the SEC crippling crypto in America.
In the letter directed to Gensler, the bipartisan coalition of elected noted: “It appears there has been a recent trend towards employing the Enforcement Division’s investigative functions to gather information from unregulated cryptocurrency and blockchain industry participants in a manner inconsistent with the Commission’s standards for initiating investigations.”
The lawmakers emphasized:
“We have reason to believe that these requests might be at odds with the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA).”
This letter made it clear that the PRA calls for federal agencies to be “good stewards of the public’s time, and not overwhelm them with unnecessary or duplicative requests for information.”
The letter calls on the SEC to respond to the 13 questions listed in the letter by April 29. The list of the questions is located here.
Davidson is one of the most vocal advocates of cryptocurrencies in the U.S. House. Cryptocurrencies represent one of the most organic monetary experiments in contemporary times. They could perhaps challenge the fiat money status quo.
However, there are harsh realities of politics that come into play when talking about crypto’s rise. For example, the state is still omnipresent thanks to the embrace of an expansive state over the last century. As a result, new technological innovations will need to have an “inside/outside” game where there are entrepreneurs building disruptive technologies and advocates on the proverbial inside making sure that these technologies are not regulated or taxed out of existence.
