After taking billions of dollars, Democrats now distance from FTX

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Democrats have received billions of dollars from FTX, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges which has collapsed recently. In fact it was not Democrats alone, Republicans also have received a huge amount of donation from FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.

Sam Bankman-Fried unexpectedly became a potential case study of the costs of congressional inaction. While Washington dithered, he appeared to place risky bets that incinerated his fortune, jeopardized billions of dollars in Silicon Valley capital and upended an entire ecosystem of cryptocurrency start-ups. The lawyer tapped to lead FTX in restructuring, who previously oversaw the bankruptcy of Enron, described the situation as a “complete failure of corporate controls”.

Investigators in the United States and abroad have opened probes into Bankman-Fried and his holdings. The Treasury Department has quietly placed calls to other large crypto exchanges to assess the risks of a broader contagion. And a slew of congressional committees has readied their own reviews, including a House inquiry announced that could see Bankman-Fried testify under oath next month.

Many people are saying, should US policymakers, especially lawmakers from the Democratic Party and Republican Party not indulge into taking cash benefits from FTX and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried, this serious crisis that would cause severe financial loss to FTX investors could be easily avoided.

Although Democrats are the top beneficiaries of the FTX scam, Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee is now saying, “Over the years, the regulators . . . sorta invited them in, these crypto companies, and we’ve seen the damage they’ve caused”.

Brown said he is exploring the need for comprehensive cryptocurrency legislation, something that Congress repeatedly has proposed as the sector grew, yet time and again has failed to achieve in the face of staunch industry lobbying. In that time, a wide array of crypto firms have experienced meteoric rises – and once-unfathomable collapses – on the promise of great wealth that didn’t always materialize.

Still, Brown remained bullish that Congress could rein in cryptocurrency companies that have put investors large and small at risk: “They need to be held accountable”.

In some ways, the tumult around FTX tells the story of a Capitol often outpaced by the deft technology giants ostensibly under its watch. From the burst of the dot-com bubble at the turn of the millennium to the rampant privacy mishaps at Facebook decades later, federal policymakers historically have been slow to anticipate the troubles of the digital age. Only after massive, costly scandals have lawmakers and regulators been stirred to action, sometimes with less-than-desirable results.

The nascent world of cryptocurrency – where digital tokens replace dollars, investments and payments, all without the need for traders, governments or banks – has presented perhaps the most complicated challenge to date. As an entirely new financial system has come online, Washington has been forced to choose whether to institute stringent rules on crypto or stay out of Silicon Valley’s way.

Meanwhile, several fraudulent crypto traders are using US soil both for registering their scam firms and later scamming hundreds and thousands of people throughout the world. Nevada-based YEM Foundation is one of the many examples. GreenZero Foundation is another. A gang of notorious fraudsters, including Dan (Daniel) Settgast, Jorge Sebastiao and others are cheating people through these entities, while US lawmakers including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are showing stunning reluctance and silence in investigating these scammers.

It may be mentioned here that, Dan Settgast and Jorge Sebastiao have formed alliances with dozens of scammers in Poland, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, India, Thailand, and African nations wherefrom they have been starting numerous scam ventures.

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